Alfred Tennyson (3)

7/27/2019 Alfred Tennyson (3)

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I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.'He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horseThat hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears;For I remember'd Everard's college fameWhen we were Freshmen: then at my request

He brought it; and the poet little urged,But with some prelude of disparagement,Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,Deep-chested music, and to this result.

This is Tennyson's first study from Malory's 'Morte d'Arthur'.

We learn from Fitzgerald that it was written as early as the spring of 1835, for in thatyear Tennyson read it to Fitzgerald and Spedding, "out of a MS. in a little red book,"

and again we learn that he repeated some lines of it at the end of May, 1835, one calmday on Windermere, adding "Not bad that, Fitz., is it?" ('Life', i., 184). It is hererepresented as the eleventh book of an Epic, the rest of which had been destroyed,though Tennyson afterwards incorporated it, adding introductory lines, with what wasvirtually to prove an Epic in twelve books, 'The Idylls of the King'. The substance of the

poem is drawn from the third, fourth and fifth chapters of the twenty-first book of Malory's 'Romance', which is followed very closely. It is called "an Homeric echo," butthe diction bears a much closer resemblance to that of Virgil than to that of Homer,though the rhythm is perhaps more Homeric than Virgilian. It is Tennyson's masterpiecein "the grand style," and is indeed as near perfection as any work of this kind could be.In spite of its singular mixture of simplicity, purely Homeric, and artificiality, at timesultra-Virgilian, the incongruity never shocks, so noble and impressive is the generaleffect. The text of 1842 was never subsequently altered except in the spelling of "mere"and "though" in lines 37, 77, 147, 155, 162, 272, and in the insertion in 1853 of theline:--

"Across the ridge and pac'd beside the mere."

So all day long the noise of battle roll'd

Among the mountains by the winter sea;

Until King Arthur's table, man by man,

Had fall'n in Lyonness about their Lord,

King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,

The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,

Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,

And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, [1]

A broken chancel with a broken cross,

That stood on a dark strait of barren land.

On one side lay the Ocean, and on one

Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:

"The sequel of to-day unsolders all

The goodliest fellowship of famous knights

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Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep

They sleep--the men I loved. I think that we

Shall never more, at any future time,

Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,

Walking about the gardens and the halls

Of Camelot, as in the days that were.

I perish by this people which I made,--Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again

To rule once more--but let what will be, be,

I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm

That without help I cannot last till morn.

Thou therefore take my brand [2] Excalibur,

Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how

In those old days, one summer noon, an arm

Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,

Holding the sword--and how I row'd across

And took it, and have worn it, like a king:

And, wheresoever I am sung or told

In aftertime, this also shall be known:

But now delay not: take Excalibur,

And fling him far into the middle mere:

Watch what thou seëst, and lightly bring me word."

To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:

"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,

Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm.

A little thing may harm a wounded man.

Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,

Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."

So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept

And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,

Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,

Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang

Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down

By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock,

Came on the shining levels of the lake.

There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,

And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon,

Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth

And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:

For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, [3]

Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work

Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long

That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood,

This way and that dividing the swift mind, [4]

In act to throw: but at the last it seem'd

Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd

There in the many-knotted waterflags,

That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.

So strode he back slow to the wounded king.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:

"Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave?

What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:

"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, [5]

And the wild water lapping on the crag."

To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale:

"Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name,

Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd

Thy fëalty, nor like a noble knight:

For surer sign had follow'd, either hand,

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Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.

This is a shameful thing for men to lie.

Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again [6]

As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing

I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word."

Then went Sir Bedivere the second time

Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, [7]Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought;

But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,

How curiously and strangely chased, he smote

His palms together, and he cried aloud,

"And if indeed I cast the brand away,

Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,

Should thus be lost for ever from the earth,

Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.

What good should follow this, if this were done?

What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey,

Seeing obedience is the bond of rule,

Were it well to obey then, if a king demand

An act unprofitable against himself?

The king is sick, and knows not what he does.

What record, or what relic of my lord

Should be to aftertime, but empty breath

And rumours of a doubt? but were this kept,

Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings,

Some one might show it at a joust of arms,

Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,

Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake.

Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps

Upon the hidden bases of the hills."

So might some old man speak in the aftertime

To all the people, winning reverence.

But now much honour and much fame were lost."

So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,

And hid Excalibur the second time,

And so strode back slow to the wounded King.

Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily:

"What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"


"I heard the water lapping on the crag,

And the long ripple washing in the reeds."

To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath:

"Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, [8]

Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!

Authority forgets a dying king, [9]

Laid widow'd of the power in his eye

That bow'd the will. I see thee what thou art,

For thou, the latest-left of all my knights,

In whom should meet the offices of all,

Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;

Either from lust of gold, or like a girl

Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.

Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,

And the third time may prosper, get thee hence:

But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,

I will arise and slay thee with my hands."

Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, [10]

And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged

Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd the sword,

And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand

Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,

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And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch,

Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,

Seen where the moving isles of winter shock

By night, with noises of the northern sea.

So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur:

But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him

Three times, and drew him under in the mere.

And lightly went the other to the King.

Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath:

"Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.

Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?"


"Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems

Should blind my purpose, for I never saw,

Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die,

Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men,

So great a miracle as yonder hilt.

Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him;

But when I look'd again, behold an arm,

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,

That caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him

Three times, and drew him under in the mere."

And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard:

"My end draws nigh;'tis time that I were gone.

Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight,

And bear me to the margin; yet I fear [11]

My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."

So saying, from the pavement he hath rose,

Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,

And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes

As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere

Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears,

And would have spoken, but he found not words,

Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,

O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,

And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs.

But, as he walk'd, King Arthur panted hard,

Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed

When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King,

Muttering and murmuring at his ear"

Quick, quick! I fear it is too late, and I shall die ".

But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,

Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd,

Larger than human on the frozen hills.

He heard the deep behind him, and a cry

Before. His own thought drove him like a goad.

Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves

And barren chasms, and all to left and right

The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based

His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang

Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels--

And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,

And the long glories of the winter moon.

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, [12]

Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,

Beneath them; and descending they were ware

That all the decks were dense with stately forms

Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream--by these

Three Queens with crowns of gold--and from them rose

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A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars,

And, as it were one voice, an agony

Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills

All night in a waste land, where no one comes,

Or hath come, since the making of the world.

Then murmur'd Arthur, "Place me in the barge,"

And to the barge they came. There those three QueensPut forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.

But she, that rose the tallest of them all

And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,

And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands,

And call'd him by his name, complaining loud,

And dropping bitter tears against his brow

Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white

And colourless, and like the wither'd moon

Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;

And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops

Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls--

That made his forehead like a rising sun

High from the däis-throne--were parch'd with dust;

Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,

Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.

So like a shatter'd column lay the King;

Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,

From spur to plume a star of tournament,

Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged

Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere, [13]

"Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?

Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?

For now I see the true old times are dead,

When every morning brought a noble chance,

And every chance brought out a noble knight.

Such times have been not since the light that led

The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.

But now the whole ROUND TABLE is dissolved

Which was an image of the mighty world;

And I, the last, go forth companionless.

And the days darken round me, and the years,

Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways, [14]

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done

May He within Himself make pure! but thou,

If thou shouldst never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains [15] about the feet of God.

But now farewell. I am going a long way

With these thou seëst--if indeed I go--

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)

To the island-valley of Avilion;

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So Sir Bedivere departed and by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommeland the haft were all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this richsword in the water, thereof shall never come to good but harm and loss'. And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur under a tree."]

[Footnote 3: 1842-1853. Studs.]

[Footnote 4: Literally from Virgil ('Æn.', iv., 285).

"Atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc."]

[Footnote 5: 'Cf. Romance, Id.', v.:

"'I saw nothing but the waters wap and the waves wan.'"]

[Footnote 6: 'Romance, Id.', v.:

"'That is untruly said of thee,' said the king, 'therefore go thou lightly again and do mycommand as thou to me art lief and dear; spare not, but throw in.'

Then Sir Bedivere returned again and took the sword in his hand, and then him thoughtsin and shame to throw away that noble sword, and so eft he hid the sword and returnedagain, and told the king that he had been to the water and done his commandment."]

[Footnote 7: This line was not inserted till 1853.]


"'Ah, traitor untrue!' said King Arthur, 'now thou hast betrayed me twice. Who wouldhave weened that thou that hast been so lief and dear, and thou that art named a nobleknight, would betray me for the riches of the sword. But now go again lightly.... And

but if thou do not now as I bid thee, if ever I may see thee I shall slay thee with mineown hands."']

[Footnote 9: There is a curious illustration of this in an anecdote told of QueenElizabeth. "Cecil intimated that she must go to bed, if it were only to satisfy her people.

'Must!' she exclaimed; 'is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man,thy father if he had been alive durst not have used that word, but thou hast grown presumptuous because thou knowest that I shall die.'"

Lingard, 'Hist'., vol. vi., p. 316.]

[Footnote 10: 'Romance, Id'., v.:

"Then Sir Bedivere departed and went to the sword and lightly took it up and went tothe waterside, and then he bound the girdle about the hilt and then he threw the sword asfar into the water as he might, and then came an arm and a hand above the water, and

met it and caught it and so shook it thrice and brandished it, and then vanished away thehand with the sword in the water."]

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"'Alas,' said the king, 'help me hence for I dread me I have tarried over long'.

Then Sir Bedivere took the king upon his back and so went with him to that water."]


"And when they were at the waterside even fast by the bank hoved a little barge andmany fair ladies in it, and among them all was a queen and all they had black hoods andall they wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur. 'Now put me into the barge,'said the king, and so they did softly. And there received him three queens with greatmourning, and so they set him down and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head;and then that queen said: 'Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me?'"]


"Then Sir Bedivere cried: 'Ah, my Lord Arthur, what shall become of me now ye gofrom me and leave me here alone among mine enemies?'

'Comfort thyself,' said the king, 'and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust totrust in. For I will unto the vale of Avilion to heal me of my grievous wound. And if thou never hear more of me, pray for my soul.'"]

[Footnote 14: With this 'cf>/i>. Greene, 'James IV'., v., 4:--

"Should all things still remain in one estate

Should not in greatest arts some scars be found

Were all upright nor chang'd what world were this?

A chaos made of quiet, yet no world."

And 'cf'. Shakespeare, 'Coriolanus', ii., iii.:--

What custom wills in all things should we do it,

The dust on antique Time would be unswept,

And mountainous error too highly heaped

For Truth to overpeer.]

[Footnote 15: 'Cf.' Archdeacon Hare's "Sermon on the Law of Self-Sacrifice".

"This is the golden chain of love whereby the whole creation is bound to the throne of the Creator."

For further illustrations see 'Illust. of Tennyson', p. 158.]

[Footnote 16: Paraphrased from 'Odyssey', vi., 42-5, or 'Lucretius', iii., 18-22.]

[Footnote 17: The expression "'crowned' with summer 'sea'" from 'Odyssey', x., 195:[Greek: naeson taen peri pontos apeiritos estaphan_otai.]]

9



The Gardener's Daughter; or, the Pictures

This morning is the morning of the day,When I and Eustace from the city wentTo see the Gardener's Daughter; I and he,Brothers in Art; a friendship so completePortion'd in halves between us, that we grewThe fable of the city where we dwelt.My Eustace might have sat for Hercules;So muscular he spread, so broad of breast.He, by some law that holds in love, and drawsThe greater to the lesser, long desiredA certain miracle of symmetry,A miniature of loveliness, all graceSumm'd up and closed in little;—Juliet, she [1]

So light of foot, so light of spirit—oh, sheTo me myself, for some three careless moons,The summer pilot of an empty heartUnto the shores of nothing! Know you notSuch touches are but embassies of love,To tamper with the feelings, ere he foundEmpire for life? but Eustace painted her,And said to me, she sitting with us then,"When will _you_ paint like this?" and I replied,(My words were half in earnest, half in jest),"'Tis not your work, but Love's. Love, unperceived,

A more ideal Artist he than all,Came, drew your pencil from you, made those eyesDarker than darkest pansies, and that hair More black than ashbuds in the front of March."And Juliet answer'd laughing, "Go and seeThe Gardener's daughter: trust me, after that,You scarce can fail to match his masterpiece”.And up we rose, and on the spur we went.Not wholly in the busy world, nor quiteBeyond it, blooms the garden that I love.News from the humming city comes to it

In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock;Although between it and the garden liesA league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream,That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar,Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on,Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridgeCrown'd with the minster-towers.

The fields betweenAre dewy-fresh, browsed by deep-udder'd kine,And all about the large lime feathers low,

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The lime a summer home of murmurous wings. [2]In that still place she, hoarded in herself,Grew, seldom seen: not less among us livedHer fame from lip to lip. Who had not heardOf Rose, the Gardener's daughter? Where was he,

So blunt in memory, so old at heart,At such a distance from his youth in grief,That, having seen, forgot? The common mouth,So gross to express delight, in praise of her Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love,And Beauty such a mistress of the world.And if I said that Fancy, led by Love,Would play with flying forms and images,Yet this is also true, that, long beforeI look'd upon her, when I heard her nameMy heart was like a prophet to my heart,

And told me I should love. A crowd of hopes,That sought to sow themselves like winged seeds,Born out of everything I heard and saw,Flutter'd about my senses and my soul;And vague desires, like fitful blasts of balmTo one that travels quickly, made the air Of Life delicious, and all kinds of thought,That verged upon them sweeter than the dreamDream'd by a happy man, when the dark East,Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn.And sure this orbit of the memory foldsFor ever in itself the day we wentTo see her. All the land in flowery squares,Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud [3]Drew downward: but all else of heaven was pureUp to the Sun, and May from verge to verge,And May with me from head to heel. And now,As tho' 'twere yesterday, as tho' it wereThe hour just flown, that morn with all its sound(For those old Mays had thrice the life of these),

Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze,And, where the hedge-row cuts the pathway, stood,Leaning his horns into the neighbour field,And lowing to his fellows. From the woodsCame voices of the well-contented doves.The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,But shook his song together as he near'dHis happy home, the ground. To left and right,The cuckoo told his name to all the hills;The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm;The redcap [4] whistled; [5] and the nightingale

Sang loud, as tho' he were the bird of day.And Eustace turn'd, and smiling said to me,

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"Hear how the bushes echo! by my life,These birds have joyful thoughts. Think you they singLike poets, from the vanity of song?Or have they any sense of why they sing?And would they praise the heavens for what they have?"

And I made answer, "Were there nothing elseFor which to praise the heavens but only love,That only love were cause enough for praise".Lightly he laugh'd, as one that read my thought,And on we went; but ere an hour had pass'd,We reach'd a meadow slanting to the North;Down which a well-worn pathway courted usTo one green wicket in a privet hedge;This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk Thro' crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned;And one warm gust, full-fed with perfume, blew

Beyond us, as we enter'd in the cool.The garden stretches southward. In the midstA cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade.The garden-glasses shone, and momentlyThe twinkling laurel scatter'd silver lights."Eustace," I said, "This wonder keeps the house."He nodded, but a moment afterwardsHe cried, "Look! look!" Before he ceased I turn'd,And, ere a star can wink, beheld her there.For up the porch there grew an Eastern rose,That, flowering high, the last night's gale had caught,And blown across the walk. One arm aloft— Gown'd in pure white, that fitted to the shape— Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood.A single stream of all her soft brown hair Pour'd on one side: the shadow of the flowersStole all the golden gloss, and, waveringLovingly lower, trembled on her waist— Ah, happy shade—and still went wavering down,But, ere it touch'd a foot, that might have dancedThe greensward into greener circles, dipt,

And mix'd with shadows of the common ground!But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunn'dHer violet eyes, and all her Hebe-bloom,And doubled his own warmth against her lips,And on the bounteous wave of such a breastAs never pencil drew. Half light, half shade,She stood, a sight to make an old man young.So rapt, we near'd the house; but she, a RoseIn roses, mingled with her fragrant toil,Nor heard us come, nor from her tendance turn'dInto the world without; till close at hand,

And almost ere I knew mine own intent,This murmur broke the stillness of that air

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Which brooded round about her: "Ah, one rose,One rose, but one, by those fair fingers cull'd,Were worth a hundred kisses press'd on lipsLess exquisite than thine." She look'd: but allSuffused with blushes—neither self-possess'd

Nor startled, but betwixt this mood and that,Divided in a graceful quiet—paused,And dropt the branch she held, and turning, woundHer looser hair in braid, and stirr'd her lipsFor some sweet answer, tho' no answer came,Nor yet refused the rose, but granted it,And moved away, and left me, statue-like,In act to render thanks. I, that whole day,Saw her no more, altho' I linger'd thereTill every daisy slept, and Love's white star Beam'd thro' the thicken'd cedar in the dusk.

So home we went, and all the livelong wayWith solemn gibe did Eustace banter me."Now," said he, "will you climb the top of Art;You cannot fail but work in hues to dimThe Titianic Flora. Will you matchMy Juliet? you, not you,—the Master,Love, A more ideal Artist he than all."

So home I went, but could not sleep for joy,Reading her perfect features in the gloom,Kissing the rose she gave me o'er and o'er,And shaping faithful record of the glanceThat graced the giving—such a noise of lifeSwarm'd in the golden present, such a voiceCall'd to me from the years to come, and suchA length of bright horizon rimm'd the dark.And all that night I heard the watchmen pealThe sliding season: all that night I heardThe heavy clocks knolling the drowsy hours.The drowsy hours, dispensers of all good,O'er the mute city stole with folded wings,

Distilling odours on me as they wentTo greet their fairer sisters of the East.

Love at first sight, first-born, and heir to all,Made this night thus. Henceforward squall nor stormCould keep me from that Eden where she dwelt.Light pretexts drew me: sometimes aDutch love For tulips; then for roses, moss or musk,To grace my city-rooms; or fruits and creamServed in the weeping elm; and more and moreA word could bring the colour to my cheek;

A thought would fill my eyes with happy dew;Love trebled life within me, and with each

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Let in the day". Here, then, my words have end.Yet might I tell of meetings, of farewells— Of that which came between, more sweet than each,In whispers, like the whispers of the leavesThat tremble round a nightingale—in sighs

Which perfect Joy, perplex'd for utterance,Stole from her [10] sister Sorrow. Might I not tellOf difference, reconcilement, pledges given,And vows, where there was never need of vows,And kisses, where the heart on one wild leapHung tranced from all pulsation, as aboveThe heavens between their fairy fleeces paleSow'd all their mystic gulfs with fleeting stars;Or while the balmy glooming, crescent-lit,Spread the light haze along the river-shores,And in the hollows; or as once we met

Unheedful, tho' beneath a whispering rainNight slid down one long stream of sighing wind,And in her bosom bore the baby, Sleep.But this whole hour your eyes have been intentOn that veil'd picture—veil'd, for what it holdsMay not be dwelt on by the common day.This prelude has prepared thee. Raise thy soul;Make thine heart ready with thine eyes: the timeIs come to raise the veil. Behold her there,As I beheld her ere she knew my heart,My first, last love; the idol of my youth,The darling of my manhood, and, alas!Now the most blessed memory of mine age.

Dora

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http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/File:Dora13.jpg



WITH farmer Allan at the farm abode

William and Dora. William was his son,And she his niece. He often look'd at them,And often thought, 'I'll make them man and wife.'

Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all,And yearn'd towards William; but the youth, becauseHe had been always with her in the house,Thought not of Dora.

Then there came a day

When Allan call'd his son, and said, 'My son:I married late, but I would wish to seeMy grandchild on my knees before I die:And I have set my heart upon a match.

Now therefore look to Dora; she is wellTo look to; thrifty too beyond her age.She is my brother's daughter; he and IHad once hard words, and parted, and he died

In foreign lands; but for his sake I bredHis daughter Dora: take her for your wife;For I have wish'd this marriage, night and day,For many years.' But William answer'd short;'I cannot marry Dora; by my life,I will not marry Dora.' Then the old manWas wroth, and doubled up his hands, and said:'You will not, boy! you dare to answer thus!But in my time a father's word was law,And so it shall be now for me. Look to it;Consider, William: take a month to think,

And let me have an answer to my wish;

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Or, by the Lord that made me, you shall pack,And never more darken my doors again.'

But William answer'd madly; bit his lips,

And broke away. The more he look'd at her The less he liked her; and his ways were harsh;But Dora bore them meekly. Then beforeThe month was out he left his father's house,And hired himself to work within the fields;And half in love, half spite, he woo'd and wedA laborer's daughter, Mary Morrison.

Then, when the bells were ringing, Allan call'dHis niece and said: 'My girl, I love you well;But if you speak with him that was my son,

Or change a word with her he calls his wife,My home is none of yours. My will is law.'

And Dora promised, being meek. She thought,‘It cannot be: my uncle's mind will change!’

And days went on, and there was born a boyTo William; then distresses came on him;And day by day he pass’d his father’s gate,Heart-broken, and his father help’d him not.But Dora stored what little she could save,And sent it them by stealth, nor did they knowWho sent it; till at last a fever seizedOn William, and in harvest time he died.

Then Dora went to Mary. Mary satAnd look'd with tears upon her boy, and thoughtHard things of Dora. Dora came and said:

‘I have obey'd my uncle until now,And I have sinn'd, for it was all thro' meThis evil came on William at the first.

But, Mary, for the sake of him that's gone,And for your sake, the woman that he chose,And for this orphan, I am come to you:You know there has not been for these five yearsSo full a harvest: let me take the boy,And I will set him in my uncle's eyeAmong the wheat; that when his heart is gladOf the full harvest, he may see the boy,And bless him for the sake of him that's gone.’

And Dora took the child, and went her way

Across the wheat, and sat upon a moundThat was unsown, where many poppies grew.

17



Far off the farmer came into the fieldAnd spied her not; for none of all his menDare tell him Dora waited with the child;And Dora would have risen and gone to him,But her heart fail'd her; and the reapers reap'd,

And the sun fell, and all the land was dark.

But when the morrow came she rose and took The child once more, and sat upon the mound;And made a little wreath of all the flowers

That grew about, and tied it round his hat,To make him pleasing in her uncle's eye.Then when the farmer pass'd into the field

He spied her, and he left his men at work,And came and said: ‘Where were you yesterday?Whose child is that? What are you doing here?’So Dora cast her eyes upon the ground,And answer'd softly, ‘This is William's child!’— ‘And did I not,’ said Allan, ‘did I not

Forbid you, Dora?’ Dora said again:‘Do with me as you will, but take the child,And bless him for the sake of him that's gone!’

And Allan said, ‘I see it is a trick Got up betwixt you and the woman there.I must be taught my duty, and by you!You knew my word was law, and yet you daredTo slight it. Well — for I will take the boy;But go you hence, and never see me more.’

So saying, he took the boy, that cried aloudAnd struggled hard. The wreath of flowers fell

18




At Dora's feet. She bow'd upon her hands,And the boy's cry came to her from the field,More and more distant.

She bow'd down her head,

Remembering the day when first she came,And all the things that had been.

She bow'd downAnd wept in secret; and the reapers reap'd,And the sun fell, and all the land was dark.

Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stoodUpon the threshold. Mary saw the boyWas not with Dora. She broke out in praise

To God, that help'd her in her widowhood.And Dora said, ‘My uncle took the boy;But, Mary, let me live and work with you:He says that he will never see me more.’Then answer'd Mary, ‘This shall never be,That thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself:And, now I think, he shall not have the boy,

For he will teach him hardness, and to slightHis mother; therefore thou and I will go,And I will have my boy, and bring him home;And I will beg of him to take thee back;But if he will not take thee back again,Then thou and I will live within one house,And work for William's child, until he growsOf age to help us.’

So the women kiss'dEach other, and set out, and reach'd the farm.The door was off the latch: they peep'd and sawThe boy set up betwixt his grandsire's knees,Who thrust him in the hollows of his arm,

And clapt him on the hands and on the cheeks,Like one that loved him: and the lad stretch'd outAnd babbled for the golden seal, that hungFrom Allan's watch, and sparkled by the fire.Then they came in: but when the boy beheldHis mother, he cried out to come to her:And Allan set him down, and Mary said:

‘O father! — if you let me call you so — I never came a-begging for myself,Or William, or this child; but now I come

19



For Dora: take her back; she loves you well.Sir, when William died, he died at peaceWith all men; for I ask'd him, and he said,He could not ever rue his marrying me — I had been a patient wife: but, Sir, he said

That he was wrong to cross his father thus:“God bless him!” he said, “and may he never know

The troubles I have gone thro’!” Then he turn'dHis face and pass'd — unhappy that I am!But now, sir, let me have my boy, for youWill make him hard, and he will learn to slightHis father's memory; and take Dora back,And let all this be as it was before.’

So Mary said, and Dora hid her face

By Mary. There was silence in the room;

And all at once the old man burst in sobs;‘I have been to blame — to blame. I have kill'd my son.

I have kill'd him — but I loved him — my dear son.May God forgive me! — I have been to blame.Kiss me, my children.’

Then they clung aboutThe old man's neck, and kiss'd him many times,And all the man was broken with remorse ;And all his love came back a hundred fold;And for three hours he sobb'd o'er William's childThinking of William.

So those four abodeWithin one house together; and, as yearsWent forward, Mary took another mate;But Dora lived unmarried till her death.

Audley Court

‘The Bull, the Fleece are cramm’d, and not a roomFor love or money. Let us picnic thereAt Audley Court.’

I spoke, while Audley feast

Humm’d like a hive all round the narrow quay,To Francis, with a basket on his arm,To Francis just alighted from the boat,

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And breathing of the sea. ‘With all my heart,’Said Francis. Then we shoulder’d thro’ the swarm,And rounded by the stillness of the beachTo where the bay runs up its latest horn.

We left the dying ebb that faintly lipp’dThe flat red granite; so by many a sweepOf meadow smooth from aftermath we reach’dThe griffin-guarded gates, and pass’d thro’ allThe pillar’d dusk of sounding sycamores,And cross’d the garden to the gardener’s lodge,With all its casements bedded, and its wallsAnd chimneys muffled in the leafy vine.

There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laidA damask napkin wrought with horse and hound,

Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home,And, half-cut-down, a pasty costly-made,Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay,Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolksImbedded and injellied; last, with these,A flask of cider from his father’s vats,Prime, which I knew; and so we sat and eatAnd talk’d old matters over; who was dead,Who married, who was like to be, and howThe races went, and who would rent the hall:Then touch’d upon the game, how scarce it wasThis season; glancing thence, discuss’d the farm,The four-field system, and the price of grain;And struck upon the corn-laws, where we split,And came again together on the kingWith heated faces; till he laugh’d aloud;And, while the blackbird on the pippin hungTo hear him, clapt his hand in mine and sang–

‘Oh! who would fight and march and countermarch,Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field,

And shovell’d up into some bloody trenchWhere no one knows? but let me live my life.‘Oh! who would cast and balance at a desk,

Perch’d like a crow upon a three-legg’d stool,Till all his juice is dried, and all his jointsAre full of chalk? but let me live my life.

‘Who’d serve the state? for if I carved my nameUpon the cliffs that guard my native land,I might as well have traced it in the sands;The sea wastes all: but let me live my life.

‘Oh! who would love? I woo’d a woman once,

But she was sharper than an eastern wind,And all my heart turn’d from her, as a thorn

21



Turns from the sea; but let me live my life.’

He sang his song, and I replied with mine:I found it in a volume, all of songs,Knock’d down to me, when old Sir Robert’s pride,

His books–the more the pity, so I said– Came to the hammer here in March–and this– I set the words, and added names I knew.

‘Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me:Sleep, Ellen, folded in thy sister’s arm,And sleeping, haply dream her arm is mine.

‘Sleep, Ellen, folded in Emilia’s arm;Emilia, fairer than all else but thou,For thou art fairer than all else that is.

‘Sleep, breathing health and peace upon her breast:

Sleep, breathing love and trust against her lip:I go to-night: I come to-morrow morn.

‘I go, but I return: I would I wereThe pilot of the darkness and the dream.Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, love, and dream of me.’

So sang we each to either, Francis Hale,The farmer’s son, who lived across the bay,My friend; and I, that having wherewithal,And in the fallow leisure of my lifeA rolling stone of here and everywhere,Did what I would; but ere the night we roseAnd saunter’d home beneath a moon, that, justIn crescent, dimly rain’d about the leaf Twilights of airy silver, till we reach’dThe limit of the hills; and as we sank From rock to rock upon the glooming quay,The town was hush’d beneath us: lower downThe bay was oily calm; the harbour-buoy,Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm,With one green sparkle ever and anon

Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart.

Walking to the Mail

'John'. I'm glad I walk'd.How fresh the meadows look

Above the river, and, but a month ago,The whole hill-side was redder than a fox.

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Is yon plantation where this byway joinsThe turnpike? [1]

'James'. Yes.

'John'. And when does this come by?

'James'. The mail? At one o'clock.

'John'. What is it now?

James'. A quarter to.

'John'. Whose house is that I see? [2]No, not the County Member's with the vane:Up higher with the yewtree by it, and half

A score of gables.

'James'. That? Sir Edward Head's:But he's abroad: the place is to be sold.

'John'. Oh, his. He was not broken?

'James'. No, sir, he,Vex'd with a morbid devil in his bloodThat veil'd the world with jaundice, hid his faceFrom all men, and commercing with himself,He lost the sense that handles daily life--That keeps us all in order more or less--And sick of home went overseas for change.

'John'. And whither?

'James'. Nay, who knows? he's here and there.But let him go; his devil goes with him,As well as with his tenant, Jockey Dawes.

'John'. What's that?'James-. You saw the man--on Monday, was it?--[3]

There by the hump-back'd willow; half stands upAnd bristles; half has fall'n and made a bridge;And there he caught the younker tickling trout--Caught in 'flagrante'--what's the Latin word?--'Delicto'; but his house, for so they say,Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that shook The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at doors,And rummaged like a rat: no servant stay'd:

The farmer vext packs up his beds and chairs,And all his household stuff; and with his boy

23



Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt,Sets out, [4] and meets a friend who hails him,"What! You're flitting!" "Yes, we're flitting," says the ghost(For they had pack'd the thing among the beds)."Oh, well," says he, "you flitting with us too--

Jack, turn the horses' heads and home again". [5]

'John'. He left 'his' wife behind; for so I heard.

'James'. He left her, yes. I met my lady once:A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs.

'John'. Oh, yet, but I remember, ten years back--'Tis now at least ten years--and then she was--You could not light upon a sweeter thing:A body slight and round and like a pear

In growing, modest eyes, a hand a footLessening in perfect cadence, and a skinAs clean and white as privet when it flowers.

'James'. Ay, ay, the blossom fades and they that lovedAt first like dove and dove were cat and dog.She was the daughter of a cottager,Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride,New things and old, himself and her, she sour'dTo what she is: a nature never kind!Like men, like manners: like breeds like, they say.Kind nature is the best: those manners nextThat fit us like a nature second-hand;Which are indeed the manners of the great.

'John'. But I had heard it was this bill that past,And fear of change at home, that drove him hence.

'James'. That was the last drop in the cup of gall.I once was near him, when his bailiff broughtA Chartist pike. You should have seen him wince

As from a venomous thing: he thought himself A mark for all, and shudder'd, lest a cryShould break his sleep by night, and his nice eyesShould see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbsSweat on his blazon'd chairs; but, sir, you knowThat these two parties still divide the world--Of those that want, and those that have: and stillThe same old sore breaks out from age to ageWith much the same result. Now I myself, [6]A Tory to the quick, was as a boyDestructive, when I had not what I would.

I was at school--a college in the South:There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit,

24



His hens, his eggs; but there was law for 'us';We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She,With meditative grunts of much content, [7]Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.By night we dragg'd her to the college tower

From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.Large range of prospect had the mother sow,And but for daily loss of one she loved,As one by one we took them--but for this--As never sow was higher in this world--Might have been happy: but what lot is pure!We took them all, till she was left aloneUpon her tower, the Niobe of swine,And so return'd unfarrowed to her sty.

'John.' They found you out?

'James.' Not they.

'John.' Well--after all--What know we of the secret of a man?His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound,That we should mimic this raw fool the world,Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,As ruthless as a baby with a worm,As cruel as a schoolboy ere he growsTo Pity--more from ignorance than will,But put your best foot forward, or I fear That we shall miss the mail: and here it comesWith five at top: as quaint a four-in-handAs you shall see--three pyebalds and a roan.

Edwin Morris; or, the Lake

O Me, my pleasant rambles by the lake,My sweet, wild, fresh three-quarters of a year,My one Oasis in the dust and drouthOf city life! I was a sketcher then:See here, my doing: curves of mountain, bridge,Boat, island, ruins of a castle, builtWhen men knew how to build, upon a rock,With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock:And here, new-comers in an ancient hold,New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires,

Here lived the Hills—a Tudor-chimnied bulk Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.

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O me, my pleasant rambles by the lakeWith Edwin Morris and with Edward BullThe curate; he was fatter than his cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names,

Long-learned names of agaric, moss and fern,Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks,Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim,Who read me rhymes elaborately good,His own—I call'd him Crichton, for he seem'dAll-perfect, finish'd to the finger nail.And once I ask'd him of his early life,And his first passion; and he answer'd me;And well his words became him: was he notA full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquenceStored from all flowers? Poet-like he spoke.

"My love for Nature is as old as I;But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that,And three rich sennights more, my love for her.My love for Nature and my love for her,Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew,Twin-sisters differently beautiful.To some full music rose and sank the sun,And some full music seem'd to move and changeWith all the varied changes of the dark,And either twilight and the day between;For daily hope fulfill'd, to rise againRevolving toward fulfilment, made it sweetTo walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, to breathe."

Or this or something like to this he spoke.Then said the fat-faced curate Edward Bull,"I take it, God made the woman for the man,And for the good and increase of the world,A pretty face is well, and this is well,To have a dame indoors, that trims us up,

And keeps us tight; but these unreal waysSeem but the theme of writers, and indeedWorn threadbare. Man is made of solid stuff.I say, God made the woman for the man,And for the good and increase of the world."

"Parson," said I, "you pitch the pipe too low:But I have sudden touches, and can runMy faith beyond my practice into his:Tho' if, in dancing after Letty Hill,I do not hear the bells upon my cap,

I scarce hear other music: yet say on.What should one give to light on such a dream?"

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I ask'd him half-sardonically."Give? Give all thou art," he answer'd, and a lightOf laughter dimpled in his swarthy cheek;"I would have hid her needle in my heart,To save her little finger from a scratch

No deeper than the skin: my ears could hear Her lightest breaths: her least remark was worthThe experience of the wise. I went and came;Her voice fled always thro' the summer land;I spoke her name alone. Thrice-happy days!The flower of each, those moments when we met,The crown of all, we met to part no more."

Were not his words delicious, I a beastTo take them as I did? but something jarr'd;Whether he spoke too largely; that there seem'd

A touch of something false, some self-conceit,Or over-smoothness: howsoe'er it was,He scarcely hit my humour, and I said: —

"Friend Edwin, do not think yourself aloneOf all men happy. Shall not Love to me,As in the Latin song I learnt at school,Sneeze out a full God-bless-you right and left?But you can talk: yours is a kindly vein:I have I think—Heaven knows—as much within;Have or should have, but for a thought or two,That like a purple beech among the greensLooks out of place: 'tis from no want in her:It is my shyness, or my self-distrust,Or something of a wayward modern mindDissecting passion. Time will set me right."

So spoke I knowing not the things that were.Then said the fat-faced curate, Edward Bull:"God made the woman for the use of man,And for the good and increase of the world".

And I and Edwin laugh'd; and now we pausedAbout the windings of the marge to hear The soft wind blowing over meadowy holmsAnd alders, garden-isles; and now we leftThe clerk behind us, I and he, and ranBy ripply shallows of the lisping lake,Delighted with the freshness and the sound.But, when the bracken rusted on their crags,My suit had wither'd, nipt to death by himThat was a God, and is a lawyer's clerk,The rentroll Cupid of our rainy isles.

'Tis true, we met; one hour I had, no more:

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She sent a note, the seal an Elle vous suit ,The close "Your Letty, only yours"; and thisThrice underscored. The friendly mist of mornClung to the lake. I boated over, ranMy craft aground, and heard with beating heart

The Sweet-Gale rustle round the shelving keel;And out I stept, and up I crept: she moved,Like Proserpine in Enna, gathering flowers:Then low and sweet I whistled thrice; and she,She turn'd, we closed, we kiss'd, swore faith, I breathedIn some new planet: a silent cousin stoleUpon us and departed: "Leave," she cried,"O leave me!" "Never, dearest, never: hereI brave the worst:" and while we stood like foolsEmbracing, all at once a score of pugsAnd poodles yell'd within, and out they came

Trustees and Aunts and Uncles. "What, with him!"Go" (shrill'd the cottonspinning chorus) "him!"I choked. Again they shriek'd the burthen "Him!"Again with hands of wild rejection "Go!— Girl, get you in!" She went—and in one monthThey wedded her to sixty thousand pounds,To lands in Kent and messuages in York,And slight Sir Robert with his watery smileAnd educated whisker. But for me,They set an ancient creditor to work:It seems I broke a close with force and arms:There came a mystic token from the kingTo greet the sheriff, needless courtesy!I read, and fled by night, and flying turn'd:Her taper glimmer'd in the lake below:I turn'd once more, close-button'd to the storm;So left the place, left Edwin, nor have seenHim since, nor heard of her, nor cared to hear.Nor cared to hear? perhaps; yet long agoI have pardon'd little Letty; not indeed,It may be, for her own dear sake but this,

She seems a part of those fresh days to me;For in the dust and drouth of London lifeShe moves among my visions of the lake,While the prime swallow dips his wing, or thenWhile the gold-lily blows, and overheadThe light cloud smoulders on the summer crag.

St. Simeon Stylites

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Photogravure illustration by W.E.F. Britten.

And yet I know not well,For that the evil ones come here, and say,"Fall down, O Simeon: thou hast suffered longFor ages and for ages!"

Although I be the basest of mankind,From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meetFor troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,I will not cease to grasp the hope I holdOf saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years,

Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold,In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps,A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud,Patient on this tall pillar I have borneRain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;And I had hoped that ere this period closedThou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,Denying not these weather-beaten limbsThe meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.

O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe, Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.

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Pain heaped ten-hundred-fold to this, were stillLess burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,Than were those lead-like tons of sin that crushedMy spirit flat before thee.

O Lord, Lord,Thou knowest I bore this better at the first,For I was strong and hale of body then;And though my teeth, which now are dropped away,Would chatter with the cold, and all my beardWas tagged with icy fringes in the moon,I drowned the whoopings of the owl with soundOf pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes sawAn angel stand and watch me, as I sang.

Now am I feeble grown; my end draws nigh;I hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am,

So that I scarce can hear the people humAbout the column's base, and almost blind,And scarce can recognize the fields I know;And both my thighs are rotted with the dew;Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry,While my stiff spine can hold my weary head,Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone,Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin.

O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?Show me the man hath suffered more than I.For did not all thy martyrs die one death?For either they were stoned, or crucified,Or burned in fire, or boiled in oil, or sawnIn twain beneath the ribs; but I die hereToday, and whole years long, a life of death.Bear witness, if I could have found a way(And heedfully I sifted all my thought)More slowly-painful to subdue this home

Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,I had not stinted practice, O my God.

For not alone this pillar-punishment, Not this alone I bore: but while I livedIn the white convent down the valley there,For many weeks about my loins I woreThe rope that haled the buckets from the well,Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;And spake not of it to a single soul,Until the ulcer, eating through my skin,

Betrayed my secret penance, so that allMy brethren marvelled greatly. More than this

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I bore, whereof, O God, thou knowest all.

Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee,I lived up there on yonder mountain-side.My right leg chained into the crag, I lay

Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones;Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, and twiceBlacked with thy branding thunder, and sometimesSucking the damps for drink, and eating not,Except the spare chance-gift of those that cameTo touch my body and be healed, and live:And they say then that I worked miracles,Whereof my fame is loud amongst mankind,Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, O God,Knowest alone whether this was or no.Have mercy, mercy; cover all my sin.

Then, that I might be more alone with thee,Three years I lived upon a pillar, highSix cubits, and three years on one of twelve;And twice three years I crouched on one that roseTwenty by measure; last of all, I grewTwice ten long weary weary years to this,That numbers forty cubits from the soil.

I think that I have borne as much as this -Or else I dream -and for so long a time,If I may measure time by yon slow light,And this high dial, which my sorrow crowns -So much -even so.

And yet I know not well,For that the evil ones come here, and say,"Fall down, O Simeon: thou hast suffered longFor ages and for ages!" then they prateOf penances I cannot have gone through,Perplexing me with lies; and oft I fall,

Maybe for months, in such blind lethargiesThat Heaven, and Earth, and Time are choked.

But yetBethink thee, Lord, while thou and all the saintsEnjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earthHouse in the shade of comfortable roofs,Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food,And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls,I, 'tween the spring and downfall of the light,Bow down one thousand and two hundred times,

To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the Saints;Or in the night, after a little sleep,

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I wake: the chill stars sparkle; I am wetWith drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost.I wear an undressed goatskin on my back;A grazing iron collar grinds my neck;And in my weak lean arms I lift the cross,

And strive and wrestle with thee till I die:O mercy, mercy! wash away my sin.

O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;A sinful man, conceived and born in sin:'Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this,That here come those that worship me? Ha! ha!They think that I am somewhat. What am I?The silly people take me for a saint,And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers:

And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here)Have all in all endured as much, and more,Than many just and holy men, whose namesAre registered and calendared for saints.

Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.What is it I can have done to merit this?I am a sinner viler than you all.It may be I have wrought some miracles,And cured some halt and maimed; but what of that?It may be, no one, even among the saints,May match his pains with mine; but what of that?Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,And in your looking you may kneel to God.Speak! is there any of you halt or maimed?I think you know I have some power with HeavenFrom my long penance: let him speak his wish.

Yes, I can heal him. Power goes forth from me.They say that they are healed. Ah, hark! they shout"St Simeon Stylites." Why, if so,

God reaps a harvest in me! O my soul,God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be,Can I work miracles and not be saved?This is not told of any. They were saints.It cannot be but that I shall be saved;Yea, crowned a saint. They shout, "Behold a saint!"And lower voices saint me from above.Courage, St Simeon! This dull chrysalisCracks into shining wings, and hope ere deathSpreads more and more and more, that God hath nowSponged and made blank of crimeful record all

My mortal archives.

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O my sons, my sons,I, Simeon of the pillar, by surnameStylites, among men; I, Simeon,The watcher on the column till the end;I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine bakes;

I, whose bald brows in silent hours becomeUnnaturally hoar with rime, do nowFrom my high nest of penance here proclaimThat Pontius and Iscariot by my sideShowed like fair seraphs. On the coals I lay,A vessel full of sin: all hell beneathMade me boil over. Devils plucked my sleeve,Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me.I smote them with the cross; they swarmed again.In bed like monstrous apes they crushed my chest:They flapped my light out as I read: I saw

Their faces grow between me and my book;With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whineThey burst my prayer. Yet this way was left,And by this way I 'scaped them. MortifyYour flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns;Smite, shrink not, spare not. If it may be, fastWhole Lents, and pray. I hardly, with slow steps,With slow, faint steps, and much exceeding pain,Have scrambled past those pits of fire, that stillSing in mine ears. But yield not me the praise:God only through his bounty hath thought fit,Among the powers and princes of this world,To make me an example to mankind,Which few can reach to. Yet I do not sayBut that a time may come -yea, even now,

Now, now, his footsteps smite the threshold stairsOf life -I say, that time is at the doorsWhen you may worship me without reproach;For I will leave my relics in your land,And you may carve a shrine about my dust,And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones,

When I am gathered to the glorious saints.While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest painRan shrivelling through me, and a cloudlike change,In passing, with a grosser film made thick These heavy, horny eyes. The end! the end!Surely the end! What's here? a shape, a shade,A flash of light. Is that the angel thereThat holds a crown? Come, blessed brother, come.I know thy glittering face. I waited long;My brows are ready. What! deny it now?

Nay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I clutch it. Christ!'Tis gone: 'tis here again; the crown! the crown!

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So now 'tis fitted on and grows to me,And from it melt the dews of Paradise,Sweet! sweet! spikenard, and balm, and frankincense.Ah! let me not be fooled, sweet saints: I trustThat I am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven.

Speak, if there be a priest, a man of God,Among you there, and let him presentlyApproach, and lean a ladder on the shaft,And climbing up into my airy home,Deliver me the blessed sacrament;For by the warning of the Holy Ghost,I prophesy that I shall die tonight,A quarter before twelve.

But thou, O Lord,

Aid all this foolish people; let them takeExample, pattern: lead them to thy light.

The Talking Oak

Once more the gate behind me falls;Once more before my faceI see the moulder'd Abbey-walls,That stand within the chace.

Beyond the lodge the city lies,Beneath its drift of smoke;And ah! with what delighted eyesI turn to yonder oak.

For when my passion first began,Ere that, which in me burn'd,The love, that makes me thrice a man,

Could hope itself return'd;To yonder oak within the fieldI spoke without restraint,And with a larger faith appeal'dThan Papist unto Saint.

For oft I talk'd with him apartAnd told him of my choice,Until he plagiarized a heart,And answer'd with a voice.

Tho' what he whisper'd under Heaven

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None else could understand;I found him garrulously given,A babbler in the land.

But since I heard him make reply

Is many a weary hour;'Twere well to question him, and tryIf yet he keeps the power.

Hail, hidden to the knees in fern,Broad Oak of Sumner-chace,Whose topmost branches can discernThe roofs of Sumner-place!

Say thou, whereon I carved her name,If ever maid or spouse,

As fair as my Olivia, cameTo rest beneath thy boughs.---

"O Walter, I have shelter'd hereWhatever maiden graceThe good old Summers, year by year Made ripe in Sumner-chace:

"Old Summers, when the monk was fat,And, issuing shorn and sleek,Would twist his girdle tight, and patThe girls upon the cheek,

"Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence,And number'd bead, and shrift,Bluff Harry broke into the spenceAnd turn'd the cowls adrift:

"And I have seen some score of thoseFresh faces that would thriveWhen his man-minded offset rose

To chase the deer at five;"And all that from the town would stroll,Till that wild wind made work In which the gloomy brewer's soulWent by me, like a stork:

"The slight she-slips of royal blood,And others, passing praise,Straight-laced, but all-too-full in budFor puritanic stays:

"And I have shadow'd many a group

35



Of beauties, that were bornIn teacup-times of hood and hoop,Or while the patch was worn;

"And, leg and arm with love-knots gay

About me leap'd and laugh'dThe modish Cupid of the day,And shrill'd his tinsel shaft.

"I swear (and else may insects prick Each leaf into a gall)This girl, for whom your heart is sick,Is three times worth them all.

"For those and theirs, by Nature's law,Have faded long ago;

But in these latter springs I sawYour own Olivia blow,

"From when she gamboll'd on the greensA baby-germ, to whenThe maiden blossoms of her teensCould number five from ten.

"I swear, by leaf, and wind, and rain,(And hear me with thine ears,)That, tho' I circle in the grainFive hundred rings of years---

"Yet, since I first could cast a shade,Did never creature passSo slightly, musically made,So light upon the grass:

"For as to fairies, that will flitTo make the greensward fresh,I hold them exquisitely knit,

But far too spare of flesh."Oh, hide thy knotted knees in fern,And overlook the chace;And from thy topmost branch discernThe roofs of Sumner-place.

But thou, whereon I carved her name,That oft hast heard my vows,Declare when last Olivia cameTo sport beneath thy boughs.

"O yesterday, you know, the fair

36



Was holden at the town;Her father left his good arm-chair,And rode his hunter down.

"And with him Albert came on his.

I look'd at him with joy:As cowslip unto oxlip is,So seems she to the boy.

"An hour had past---and, sitting straightWithin the low-wheel'd chaise,Her mother trundled to the gateBehind the dappled grays.

"But as for her, she stay'd at home,And on the roof she went,

And down the way you use to come,She look'd with discontent.

"She left the novel half-uncutUpon the rosewood shelf;She left the new piano shut:She could not please herself

"Then ran she, gamesome as the colt,And livelier than a lark She sent her voice thro' all the holtBefore her, and the park.

"A light wind chased her on the wing,And in the chase grew wild,As close as might be would he clingAbout the darling child:

"But light as any wind that blowsSo fleetly did she stir,The flower, she touch'd on, dipt and rose,

And turn'd to look at her."And here she came, and round me play'd,And sang to me the wholeOf those three stanzas that you madeAbout my Ôgiant bole;'

"And in a fit of frolic mirthShe strove to span my waist:Alas, I was so broad of girth,I could not be embraced.

"I wish'd myself the fair young beech

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That here beside me stands,That round me, clasping each in each,She might have lock'd her hands.

"Yet seem'd the pressure thrice as sweet

As woodbine's fragile hold,Or when I feel about my feetThe berried briony fold."

O muffle round thy knees with fern,And shadow Sumner-chace!Long may thy topmost branch discernThe roofs of Sumner-place!

But tell me, did she read the nameI carved with many vows

When last with throbbing heart I cameTo rest beneath thy boughs?

"O yes, she wander'd round and roundThese knotted knees of mine,And found, and kiss'd the name she found,And sweetly murmur'd thine.

"A teardrop trembled from its source,And down my surface crept.My sense of touch is something coarse,But I believe she wept.

"Then flush'd her cheek with rosy light,She glanced across the plain;But not a creature was in sight:She kiss'd me once again.

"Her kisses were so close and kind,That, trust me on my word,Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,

But yet my sap was stirr'd:"And even into my inmost ringA pleasure I discern'd,Like those blind motions of the Spring,That show the year is turn'd.

"Thrice-happy he that may caressThe ringlet's waving balm---The cushions of whose touch may pressThe maiden's tender palm.

"I, rooted here among the groves

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But languidly adjustMy vapid vegetable lovesWith anthers and with dust:

"For ah! my friend, the days were brief

Whereof the poets talk,When that, which breathes within the leaf,Could slip its bark and walk.

"But could I, as in times foregone,From spray, and branch, and stem,Have suck'd and gather'd into oneThe life that spreads in them,

"She had not found me so remiss;But lightly issuing thro',

I would have paid her kiss for kiss,With usury thereto."

O flourish high, with leafy towers,And overlook the lea,Pursue thy loves among the bowersBut leave thou mine to me.

O flourish, hidden deep in fern,Old oak, I love thee well;A thousand thanks for what I learnAnd what remains to tell.

" ÔTis little more: the day was warm;At last, tired out with play,She sank her head upon her armAnd at my feet she lay.

"Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eavesI breathed upon her eyesThro' all the summer of my leaves

A welcome mix'd with sighs."I took the swarming sound of life---The music from the town---The murmurs of the drum and fifeAnd lull'd them in my own.

"Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip,To light her shaded eye;A second flutter'd round her lipLike a golden butterfly;

"A third would glimmer on her neck

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To make the necklace shine;Another slid, a sunny fleck,From head to ankle fine,

"Then close and dark my arms I spread,

And shadow'd all her rest---Dropt dews upon her golden head,An acorn in her breast.

"But in a pet she started up,And pluck'd it out, and drewMy little oakling from the cup,And flung him in the dew.

"And yet it was a graceful gift---I felt a pang within

As when I see the woodman liftHis axe to slay my kin.

"I shook him down because he wasThe finest on the tree.He lies beside thee on the grass.O kiss him once for me.

"O kiss him twice and thrice for me,That have no lips to kiss,For never yet was oak on leaShall grow so fair as this.'

Step deeper yet in herb and fern,Look further thro' the chace,Spread upward till thy boughs discernThe front of Sumner-place.

This fruit of thine by Love is blest,That but a moment layWhere fairer fruit of Love may rest

Some happy future day.I kiss it twice, I kiss it thrice,The warmth it thence shall winTo riper life may magnetiseThe baby-oak within.

But thou, while kingdoms overset,Or lapse from hand to hand,Thy leaf shall never fail, nor yetThine acorn in the land.

May never saw dismember thee,

40



Nor wielded axe disjoint,That art the fairest-spoken treeFrom here to Lizard-point.

O rock upon thy towery-top

All throats that gurgle sweet!All starry culmination dropBalm-dews to bathe thy feet!

All grass of silky feather grow---And while he sinks or swellsThe full south-breeze around thee blowThe sound of minster bells.

The fat earth feed thy branchy root,That under deeply strikes!

The northern morning o'er thee shoot,High up, in silver spikes!

Nor ever lightning char thy grain,But, rolling as in sleep,Low thunders bring the mellow rain,That makes thee broad and deep!

And hear me swear a solemn oath,That only by thy sideWill I to Olive plight my troth,And gain her for my bride.

And when my marriage morn may fall,She, Dryad-like, shall wear Alternate leaf and acorn-ballIn wreath about her hair.

And I will work in prose and rhyme,And praise thee more in bothThan bard has honour'd beech or lime,

Or that Thessalian growth,In which the swarthy ringdove sat,And mystic sentence spoke;And more than England honours that,Thy famous brother-oak,

Wherein the younger Charles abodeTill all the paths were dim,And far below the Roundhead rode,And humm'd a surly hymn.

41



Love and Duty

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Of love that never found his earthly close,What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?Or all the same as if he had not been?

Not so. Shall Error in the round of timeStill father Truth? O shall the braggart shout

For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to lawSystem and empire? Sin itself be foundThe cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?And only he, this wonder, dead, becomeMere highway dust? or year by year aloneSit brooding in the ruins of a life,

Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself!If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all,Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days,

The long mechanic pacings to and fro,The set gray life, and apathetic end.But am I not the nobler thro' thy love?O three times less unworthy! likewise thouArt more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.The Sun will run his orbit, and the MoonHer circle. Wait, and Love himself will bringThe drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruitOf wisdom. Wait: my faith is large in Time,And that which shapes it to some perfect end.Will some one say, then why not ill for good?Why took ye not your pastime? To that manMy work shall answer, since I knew the rightAnd did it; for a man is not as God,But then most Godlike being most a man.--So let me think 'tis well for thee and me--Ill-fated that I am, what lot is mineWhose foresight preaches peace, my heart so slowTo feel it! For how hard it seem'd to me,When eyes, love-languid thro' half-tears, would dwellOne earnest, earnest moment upon mine,

Then not to dare to see! when thy low voice,Faltering, would break its syllables, to keepMy own full-tuned,--hold passion in a leash,And not leap forth and fall about thy neck,And on thy bosom, (deep-desired relief!)Rain out the heavy mist of tears, that weigh'dUpon my brain, my senses, and my soul!For love himself took part against himself To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love--O this world's curse--beloved but hated--came LikeDeath betwixt thy dear embrace and mine,

And crying, "Who is this? behold thy bride,"She push'd me from thee.

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If the sense is hardTo alien ears, I did not speak to these--

No, not to thee, but to thyself in me:Hard is my doom and thine: thou knowest it all.Could Love part thus? was it not well to speak,

To have spoken once? It could not but be well.The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good,The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill,And all good things from evil, brought the nightIn which we sat together and alone,And to the want, that hollow'd all the heart,Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye,That burn'd upon its object thro' such tearsAs flow but once a life. The trance gave wayTo those caresses, when a hundred timesIn that last kiss, which never was the last,

Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died.Then follow'd counsel, comfort and the wordsThat make a man feel strong in speaking truth;Till now the dark was worn, and overheadThe lights of sunset and of sunrise mix'dIn that brief night; the summer night, that pausedAmong her stars to hear us; stars that hungLove-charm'd to listen: all the wheels of TimeSpun round in station, but the end had come.O then like those, who clench their nerves to rushUpon their dissolution, we two rose,There-closing like an individual life--In one blind cry of passion and of pain,Like bitter accusation ev'n to death,Caught up the whole of love and utter'd it,And bade adieu for ever. Live--yet live--Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing allLife needs for life is possible to will--Live happy; tend thy flowers; be tended byMy blessing! Should my Shadow cross thy thoughtsToo sadly for their peace, remand it thou

For calmer hours to Memory's darkest hold,If not to be forgotten--not at once-- Not all forgotten. Should it cross thy dreams,O might it come like one that looks content,With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth,And point thee forward to a distant light,Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heartAnd leave thee frëer, till thou wake refresh'd,Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grownFull quire, and morning driv'n her plow of pearlFar furrowing into light the mounded rack,

Beyond the fair green field and eastern sea.

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Littell's Living Age

WE sleep and wake and sleep; but all things move;The sun flies forward to his brother sun;The dark earth follows, wheeled in her eclipse;And human things, returning on themselves,Move onward, leading up the Golden Year.

Ah, though the times when some new thought can budAre but as poet's seasons when they flower;Yet seas that daily gain upon the shore,Have ebb and flow conditioning their march;And slow and sure comes up the Golden Year.

When wealth no more shall rest in moulded heaps,But, smit with freer light, shall slowly meltIn many streams, to fatten lower lands,And light shall spread, and man be liker man,Through all the seasons of the Golden Year.

Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?If all the world were falcons, what of that?The wonder of the eagle were the less,But he not less the eagle. Happy days,Roll onward, leading up the Golden Year!

Fly, happy, happy, sails, and hear the press — Fly, happy with the mission of the Cross;Knit land to land, and, blowing heavenward,With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toil,Enrich the markets of the Golden Year.

But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men's goodBe each man's rule, and universal peace

Lie like a shaft of light across the land,And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,Through all the circle of the Golden Year?

Ulysses (Tennyson)

It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,

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That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees; all times I have enjoy'dGreatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and whenThro' scudding drifts the rainy HyadesVext the dim sea: I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known; cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on lifeWere all too little, and of one to meLittle remains: but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor some three suns to store and hoard myself,And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,To whom I leave the scepter and the isle— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfilThis labour, by slow prudence to make mildA rugged people, and thro' soft degreesSubdue them to the useful and the good.Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to failIn offices of tenderness, and payMeet adoration to my household gods,When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposedFree hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;Death closes all: but something ere the end,

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Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deepMoans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.Push off, and sitting well in order smiteThe sounding furrows; for my purpose holdsTo sail beyond the sunset, and the bathsOf all the western stars, until I die.It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'We are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Tithonus

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,And after many a summer dies the swan.Me only cruel immortalityConsumes; I wither slowly in thine arms,Here at the quiet limit of the world,A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dreamThe ever-silent spaces of the East,Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man— So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,

Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'dTo his great heart none other than a God!I ask'd thee, "Give me immortality."Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,Like wealthy men who care not how they give.But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills,And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me,And tho' they could not end me left me maim'dTo dwell in presence of immortal youth,Immortal age beside immortal youth,And all I was in ashes. Can thy love

Thy beauty, make amends, tho' even now,Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,

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Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tearsTo hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift:Why should a man desire in any wayTo vary from the kindly race of men,Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance

Where all should pause, as if most meet for all?

A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comesA glimpse of that dark world where I was born.Once more the old mysterious glimmer stealsFrom any pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,And bosom beating with a heart renew'd.Thy cheek begins to redden thro' the gloom,Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild teamWhich love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,

And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes,And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.Lo! ever thus thou growest beautifulIn silence, then before thine answer givenDepartest, and thy tears are on my cheek.

Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?"The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts."

Ay me! ay me! with what another heartIn days far-off, and with what other eyesI used to watch (if I be he that watch'd)The lucid outline forming round thee; sawThe dim curls kindle into sunny rings;Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my bloodGlow with the glow that slowly crimson'd allThy presence and thy portals, while I lay,Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warmWith kisses balmier than half-opening buds

Of April, and could hear the lips that kiss'dWhispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.

Yet hold me not for ever in thine East;How can my nature longer mix with thine?Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, coldAre all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feetUpon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steamFloats up from those dim fields about the homes

Of happy men that have the power to die,And grassy barrows of the happier dead.

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Release me, and restore me to the ground;Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;I earth in earth forget these empty courts,And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

Locksley Hall

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn:Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

’Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade,Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander’d, nourishing a youth sublimeWith the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.—

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, ‘My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.’

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

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And she turn’d—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs— All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—

Saying, ‘I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong’;Saying, ‘Dost thou love me, cousin?’ weeping, ‘I have loved thee long’.

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands;Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,And her whisper throng’d my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,

And our spirits rush’d together at the touching of the lips.

O my Amy, mine no more! O my cousin, shallow-hearted!O the barren, barren shore! O the dreary, dreary moorland!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,Puppet to a father’s threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me—to declineOn a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day,What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.

Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand— Better thou wert dead before me, tho’ I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart’s disgrace,Roll’d in one another’s arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

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Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature’s rule!Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten’d forehead of the fool!

Well—’tis well that I should bluster!—Hadst thou less unworthy proved— Would to God—for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?I will pluck it from my bosom, tho’ my heart be at the root.

Never, tho’ my mortal summers to such length of years should comeAs the many-winter’d crow that leads the clanging rookery home.

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish’d: sweetly did she speak and move:

Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore? No—she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn’d of devils! this is truth the poet sings,That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,To thy widow’d marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the ‘Never, never,’ whisper’d by the phantom years,And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.

Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry,’Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest.Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother’s breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.

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‘They were dangerous guides the feelings—she herself was not exempt— Truly, she herself had suffer’d’—Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it—lower yet—be happy! wherefore should I care,I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?Every door is barr’d with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng’d with suitors, all the markets overflow.I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman’s ground,When the ranks are roll’d in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels,

And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other’s heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father’s field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men;

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dewFrom the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’dIn the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

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There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumph’d, ere my passion sweeping thro’ me left me dry,Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint,Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro’ the ages one increasing purpose runs,And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,

Tho’ the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy’s?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn,They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder’d string?I am shamed thro’ all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman’s pleasure, woman’s pain— Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine,Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine—

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat

Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr’d;— I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle’s ward.

Or to burst all links of habit—there to wander far away,On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;

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Droops the heavy-blossom’d bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree— Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp’d no longer shall have scope and breathing-space;I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run,Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks. Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books—

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,

But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage—what to me were sun or clime?I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time—

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua’s moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro’ the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun:Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun—

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.

Ancient founts of inspiration well thro’ all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall! Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

Godiva

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I waited for the train at Coventry;I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,To watch the three tall spires; and there I shapedThe city's ancient legend into this:

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,New men, that in the flying of a wheelCry down the past, not only we, that prateOf rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,And loathed to see them overtax'd; but sheDid more, and underwent, and overcame,The woman of a thousand summers back,Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruledIn Coventry: for when he laid a taxUpon his town, and all the mothers broughtTheir children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!"

She sought her lord, and found him, where he strodeAbout the hall, among his dogs, alone,His beard a foot before him and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears,And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve."Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,"You would not let your little finger acheFor such as these?" -- "But I would die," said she.He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul;Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear;"Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk!" -- "Alas!" she said,"But prove me what I would not do."And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town,And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn,He parted, with great strides among his dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind,As winds from all the compass shift and blow,Made war upon each other for an hour,Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,

And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, allThe hard condition; but that she would looseThe people: therefore, as they loved her well,From then till noon no foot should pace the street,No eye look down, she passing; but that allShould keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and thereUnclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt,The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breathShe linger'd, looking like a summer moon

Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee;

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Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slidFrom pillar unto pillar, until she reach'dThe Gateway, there she found her palfrey traptIn purple blazon'd with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:The deep air listen'd round her as she rode,And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spoutHad cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame; her palfrey's foot-fall shotLight horrors thro' her pulses; the blind wallsWere full of chinks and holes; and overheadFantastic gables, crowding, stared: but sheNot less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw

The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field,Gleam thro' the Gothic archway in the wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity;And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,The fatal byword of all years to come,Boring a little auger-hole in fear,Peep'd -- but his eyes, before they had their will,Were shrivel'd into darkness in his head,And dropt before him. So the Powers, who waitOn noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused;And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all at once,With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noonWas clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers,One after one: but even then she gain'dHer bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd,To meet her lord, she took the tax awayAnd built herself an everlasting name.

The Day-Dream

O Lady Flora, let me speak:A pleasant hour has passed awayWhile, dreaming on your damask cheek,The dewy sister-eyelids lay.As by the lattice you reclined,I went thro’ many wayward moodsTo see you dreaming–and, behind,A summer crisp with shining woods.

And I too dream’d, until at lastAcross my fancy, brooding warm,The reflex of a legend past,

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And loosely settled into form.And would you have the thought I had,And see the vision that I saw,Then take the broidery-frame, and addA crimson to the quaint Macaw,And I will tell it. Turn your face,

Nor look with that too-earnest eye–The rhymes are dazzled from their placeAnd order’d words asunder fly.

THE SLEEPING PALACE

I.

The varying year with blade and sheaf Clothes and reclothes the happy plains,Here rests the sap within the leaf,Here stays the blood along the veins.Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl’d,Faint murmurs from the meadows come,Like hints and echoes of the worldTo spirits folded in the womb.

II.

Soft lustre bathes the range of urnsOn every slanting terrace-lawn.The fountain to his place returnsDeep in the garden lake withdrawn.Here droops the banner on the tower,On the hall-hearths the festal fires,The peacock in his laurel bower,The parrot in his gilded wires.

III.

Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs:In these, in those the life is stay’d.The mantles from the golden pegsDroop sleepily: no sound is made,Not even of a gnat that sings.More like a picture seemeth allThan those old portraits of old kings,That watch the sleepers from the wall.

IV.

Here sits the Butler with a flaskBetween his knees, half-drain’d; and thereThe wrinkled steward at his task,The maid-of-honour blooming fair;The page has caught her hand in his:

Her lips are sever’d as to speak:His own are pouted to a kiss:The blush is fix’d upon her cheek.

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V.

Till all the hundred summers pass,The beams, that thro’ the Oriel shine,Make prisms in every carven glass,And beaker brimm’d with noble wine.

Each baron at the banquet sleeps,Grave faces gather’d in a ring.His state the king reposing keeps.He must have been a jovial king.

VI.

All round a hedge upshoots, and showsAt distance like a little wood;Thorns, ivies, woodbine, mistletoes,And grapes with bunches red as blood;All creeping plants, a wall of greenClose-matted, bur and brake and briar,And glimpsing over these, just seen,High up, the topmost palace spire.

VII.

When will the hundred summers die,And thought and time be born again,And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,Bring truth that sways the soul of men?Here all things in their place remain,As all were order’d, ages since.Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain,And bring the fated fairy Prince.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

I.

Year after year unto her feet,She lying on her couch alone,Across the purple coverlet,

The maiden’s jet-black hair has grown,On either side her tranced formForth streaming from a braid of pearl:The slumbrous light is rich and warm,And moves not on the rounded curl.

II.

The silk star-broider’d coverlidUnto her limbs itself doth mouldLanguidly ever; and, amidHer full black ringlets downward roll’d,

Glows forth each softly-shadow’d armWith bracelets of the diamond bright:

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Her constant beauty doth informStillness with love, and day with light.

III.

She sleeps: her breathings are not heardIn palace chambers far apart.The fragrant tresses are not stirr’dThat lie upon her charmed heart.She sleeps: on either hand upswellsThe gold-fringed pillow lightly prest:She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwellsA perfect form in perfect rest.

THE ARRIVAL

I.

All precious things, discover’d late,To those that seek them issue forth;For love in sequel works with fate,And draws the veil from hidden worth.He travels far from other skies–His mantle glitters on the rocks–A fairy Prince, with joyful eyes,And lighter-footed than the fox.

II.

The bodies and the bones of thoseThat strove in other days to pass,Are wither’d in the thorny close,Or scatter’d blanching on the grass.He gazes on the silent dead:

‘They perish'd in their daring deeds.’ This proverb flashes thro’ his head,

‘The many fail: the one succeeds.’

III.

He comes, scarce knowing what he seeks:He breaks the hedge: he enters there:The colour flies into his cheeks:He trusts to light on something fair;For all his life the charm did talkAbout his path, and hover nearWith words of promise in his walk,And whisper’d voices at his ear.

IV.

More close and close his footsteps wind:

The Magic Music in his heartBeats quick and quicker, till he find

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I.

And on her lover’s arm she leant,And round her waist she felt it fold,And far across the hills they went

In that new world which is the old:Across the hills, and far awayBeyond their utmost purple rim,And deep into the dying dayThe happy princess follow’d him.

II.

‘I’d sleep another hundred years,O love, for such another kiss;’

‘O wake for ever, love,’ she hears, ‘O love, ’twas such as this and this.’ And o’er them many a sliding star,And many a merry wind was borne,And, stream’d thro’ many a golden bar,The twilight melted into morn.

III.

‘O eyes long laid in happy sleep!’ ‘O happy sleep, that lightly fled!’ ‘O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!’ ‘O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!’ And o’er them many a flowing rangeOf vapour buoy’d the crescent-bark,And, rapt thro’ many a rosy change,The twilight died into the dark.

IV.

‘A hundred summers! can it be?And whither goest thou, tell me where?’

‘O seek my father’s court with me,For there are greater wonders there.’ And o’er the hills, and far awayBeyond their utmost purple rim,Beyond the night, across the day,Thro’ all the world she follow’d him.

MORAL

I.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,And if you find no moral there,Go, look in any glass and say,

What moral is in being fair.Oh, to what uses shall we putThe wildweed-flower that simply blows?

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And is there any moral shutWithin the bosom of the rose?

II.

But any man that walks the mead,In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,According as his humours lead,A meaning suited to his mind.And liberal applications lieIn Art like Nature, dearest friend;So ’twere to cramp its use, if IShould hook it to some useful end.

L’ENVOI

I.

You shake your head. A random stringYour finer female sense offends.Well–were it not a pleasant thingTo fall asleep with all one’s friends;To pass with all our social tiesTo silence from the paths of men;And every hundred years to riseAnd learn the world, and sleep again;To sleep thro’ terms of mighty wars,And wake on science grown to more,On secrets of the brain, the stars,As wild as aught of fairy lore;And all that else the years will show,The Poet-forms of stronger hours,The vast Republics that may grow,The Federations and the Powers;Titanic forces taking birthIn divers seasons, divers climes;For we are Ancients of the earth,And in the morning of the times.

II.

So sleeping, so aroused from sleepThro’ sunny decades new and strange,Or gay quinquenniads would we reapThe flower and quintessence of change.

III.

Ah, yet would I–and would I might!So much your eyes my fancy take–Be still the first to leap to lightThat I might kiss those eyes awake!

For, am I right, or am I wrong,To choose your own you did not care;You’d have my moral from the song,

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And I will take my pleasure there:And, am I right or am I wrong,My fancy, ranging thro’ and thro’,To search a meaning for the song,Perforce will still revert to you;Nor finds a closer truth than this

All-graceful head, so richly curl’d,And evermore a costly kissThe prelude to some brighter world.

IV.

For since the time when Adam firstEmbraced his Eve in happy hour,And every bird of Eden burstIn carol, every bud to flower,What eyes, like thine, have waken’d hopes,What lips, like thine, so sweetly join’d?

Where on the double rosebud droopsThe fulness of the pensive mind;Which all too dearly self-involved,Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;A sleep by kisses undissolved,That lets thee neither hear nor see:But break it. In the name of wife,And in the rights that name may give,Are clasp’d the moral of thy life,And that for which I care to live.

EPILOGUE

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,And, if you find a meaning there,O whisper to your glass, and say,

‘What wonder, if he thinks me fair?’ What wonder I was all unwise,To shape the song for your delightLike long-tail’d birds of ParadiseThat float thro’ Heaven, and cannot light?Or old-world trains, upheld at courtBy Cupid-boys of blooming hue–But take it–earnest wed with sport,

And either sacred unto you.

Amphion

From WikisourceJump to: navigation, searchAmphion

by Alfred Tennyson

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My father left a park to me,But it is wild and barren,

A garden too with scarce a tree,

And waster than a warren;Yet say the neighbors when they callIt is not bad but good land,

And in it is the germ of allThat grows within the woodland.

O, had I lived when song was greatIn days of old Amphion,

And ta’en my fiddle to the gate,Nor cared for seed or scion!

And had I lived when song was great,And legs of trees were limber,

And ta’en my fiddle to the gate,And fiddled in the timber!

’Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,Such happy intonation,

Wherever he sat down and sungHe left a small plantation;

Wherever in a lonely groveHe set up his forlorn pipes,

The gouty oak began to move,And flounder into hornpipes.

The mountain stirr’d its bushy crown,And, as tradition teaches,

Young ashes pirouetted downCoquetting with young beeches;

And briony-vine and ivy-wreathRan forward to his rhyming,

And from the valleys underneathCame little copses climbing.

The linden broke her ranks and rentThe woodbine wreaths that bind her,And down the middle, buzz! she went

With all her bees behind her;The poplars, in long order due,

With cypress promenaded,The shock-head willows two and two

By rivers gallopaded.

Came wet-shod alder from the wave,Came yews, a dismal coterie;

Each pluck’d his one foot from the grave,Poussetting with a sloe-tree;

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Old elms came breaking from the vine,The vine stream’d out to follow,

And, sweating rosin, plump’d the pineFrom many a cloudy hollow.

And wasn’t it a sight to see,When, ere his song was ended,Like some great landslip, tree by tree,

The country-side descended;And shepherds from the mountain-eaves

Look’d down, half-pleased, half-frighten’d,As dash’d about the drunken leaves

The random sunshine lighten’d?

O, Nature first was fresh to men,And wanton without measure;

So youthful and so flexile then,You moved her at your pleasure.

Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs!And make her dance attendance;

Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,And scirrhous roots and tendons!

’Tis vain! in such a brassy ageI could not move a thistle;

The very sparrows in the hedgeScarce answer to my whistle;

Or at the most, when three-parts-sick With strumming and with scraping,

A jackass heehaws from the rick,The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a soundLike sleepy counsel pleading;

O Lord!–’tis in my neighbor’s ground,The modern Muses reading.

They read Botanic Treatises,

And Works on Gardening thro’ there,And Methods of Transplanting TreesTo look as if they grew there.

The wither’d Misses! how they proseO’er books of travell’d seamen,

And show you slips of all that growsFrom England to Van Diemen.

They read in arbors clipt and cut,And alleys, faded places,

By squares of tropic summer shut

And warm’d in crystal cases.

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But these, tho’ fed with careful dirt,Are neither green nor sappy;

Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,The spindlings look unhappy.

Better to me the meanest weed

That blows upon its mountain,The vilest herb that runs to seedBeside its native fountain.

And I must work thro’ months of toil,And years of cultivation,

Upon my proper patch of soilTo grow my own plantation.

I’ll take the showers as they fall,I will not vex my bosom;

Enough if at the end of all

A little garden blossom.

St. Agnes' Eve

Deep on the convent-roof the snowsAre sparkling to the moon:

My breath to heaven like vapour goes:May my soul follow soon!

The shadows of the convent-towersSlant down the snowy sward,

Still creeping with the creeping hoursThat lead me to my Lord:

Make Thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies,

Or this first snowdrop of the year That in my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soil'd and dark,

To yonder shining ground;As this pale taper's earthly spark,To yonder argent round;

So shows my soul before the Lamb,My spirit before Thee;

So in mine earthly house I am,To that i hope to be.

Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,Thro' all yon starlight keen,

Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,In raiment white and clean.

He lifts me to the golden doors;

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So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer A virgin heart in work and will.

When down the stormy crescent goes,A light before me swims,

Between dark stems the forest glows,I hear a noise of hymns:

Then by some secret shrine I ride;I hear a voice, but none are there;

The stalls are void, the doors are wide,The tapers burning fair.

Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,The silver vessels sparkle clean,

The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,And solemn chaunts resound between.

Sometimes on lonely mountain-meresI find a magic bark;

I leap on board: no helmsman steersI float till all is dark.

A gentle sound, an awful light!Three angels bear the Holy Grail:

With folded feet, in stoles of white,On sleeping wings they sail.

Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!

My spirit beats her mortal bars,As down dark tides the glory slides,And star-like mingles with the stars.

When on my goodly charger borneThro' dreaming towns I go,

The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,The streets are dumb with snow.

The tempest crackles on the leads,

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And, ringing, spins from brand and mail;

But o'er the dark a glory spreads,And gilds the driving hail.

I leave the plain, I climb the height;No branchy thicket shelter yields;

But blessed forms in whistling stormsFly o'er waste fens and windy fields.

A maiden knight--to me is givenSuch hope, I know not fear,

I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven

That often meet me here.

I muse on joy that will not cease,Pure spaces clothed in living beams,

Pure lilies of eternal peace,Whose odours haunt my dreams;

And, stricken by an angel's hand,This mortal armour that I wear,

This weight and size, this heart and eyes,Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.

The clouds are broken in the sky,And thro' the mountain-walls

A rolling organ-harmonySwells up, and shakes and falls.

Then move the trees, the copses nod,Wings flutter, voices hover clear:

"O just and faithful knight of God!Ride on! the prize is near."

So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;By bridge and ford, by park and pale,

All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide,Until I find the Holy Grail.

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Edward Gray

Slow sailed the weary mariners, and saw

Between the green brink and the running foam

White limbs unrobed in a chrystal air,

Sweet faces, etc.

...

middle sea.

SONG.

Whither away, whither away, whither away?

Fly no more!

Whither away wi' the singing sail? whither away wi' the oar?

Whither away from the high green field and the happy blossoming shore?

Weary mariners, hither away,

One and all, one and all,

Weary mariners, come and play;

We will sing to you all the day;

Furl the sail and the foam will fall

From the prow! one and all

Furl the sail! drop the oar!

Leap ashore!

Know danger and trouble and toil no more.

Whither away wi' the sail and the oar?

Drop the oar,

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Leap ashore,

Fly no more!

Whither away wi' the sail? whither away wi' the oar?

Day and night to the billow, etc.

...

over the lea;

They freshen the silvery-crimson shells,

And thick with white bells the cloverhill swells

High over the full-toned sea.

Merrily carol the revelling gales

Over the islands free:

From the green seabanks the rose downtrails

To the happy brimmed sea.

Come hither, come hither, and be our lords,For merry brides are we:

We will kiss sweet kisses, etc.

...

With pleasure and love and revelry;

...

ridged sea.

Ye will not find so happy a shore

Weary mariners! all the world o'er;

Oh! fly no more!

Harken ye, harken ye, sorrow shall darken ye,

Danger and trouble and toil no more;

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Whither away?

Drop the oar;

Hither away,

Leap ashore;

Oh! fly no more--no more.

Whither away, whither away, whither away with the sail and the oar?

sail'd the weary mariners and saw,

Betwixt the green brink and the running foam,

Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest

To little harps of gold; and while they mused,

Whispering to each other half in fear,

Shrill music reach'd them on the middle sea.

Whither away, whither away, whither away? fly no more.Whither away from the high green field, and the happy blossoming shore?

Day and night to the billow the fountain calls;

Down shower the gambolling waterfalls

From wandering over the lea:

Out of the live-green heart of the dells

They freshen the silvery-crimsoned shells,

And thick with white bells the clover-hill swells

High over the full-toned sea:

O hither, come hither and furl your sails,

Come hither to me and to me:

Hither, come hither and frolic and play;

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Here it is only the mew that wails;

We will sing to you all the day:

Mariner, mariner, furl your sails,

For here are the blissful downs and dales,

And merrily merrily carol the gales,

And the spangle dances in bight [1] and bay,

And the rainbow forms and flies on the land

Over the islands free;

And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand;

Hither, come hither and see;

And the rainbow hangs on the poising wave,

And sweet is the colour of cove and cave,

And sweet shall your welcome be:

O hither, come hither, and be our lords

For merry brides are we:

We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak sweet words:

O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten

With pleasure and love and jubilee:

O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten

When the sharp clear twang of the golden cords

Runs up the ridged sea.

Who can light on as happy a shore

All the world o'er, all the world o'er?

Whither away? listen and stay: mariner, mariner, fly no more.

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[Footnote 1: Bight is properly the coil of a rope; it then came to mean] a bend, and so acorner or bay. The same phrase occurs in the 'Voyage of Maledune', v.: "and flung themin bight and bay".

Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue

First published 1842. The final text was that of 1853, which has not been altered since,except that in stanza 29 the two "we's" in the first line and the "thy" in the third line arenot in later editions italicised. The Cock Tavern, No. 201 Fleet Street, on the north sideof Fleet Street, stood opposite the Temple and was of great antiquity, going back nearly

300 years. Strype, bk. iv., h. 117, describes it as "a noted public-house," and Pepys''Diary', 23rd April, 1668, speaks of himself as having been "mighty merry there". Theold carved chimney-piece was of the age of James I., and the gilt bird over the portalwas the work of Grinling Gibbons. When Tennyson wrote this poem it was the favouriteresort of templars, journalists and literary people generally, as it had long been. But theold place is now a thing of the past. On the evening of 10th April, 1886, it closed itsdoors for ever after an existence of nearly 300 years. There is an admirable descriptionof it, signed A. J. M., in 'Notes and Queries', seventh series, vol. i., 442-6. I give a shortextract:

"At the end of a long room beyond the skylight which, except a feeble side window, was

its only light in the daytime, was a door that led past a small lavatory and up half a

dozen narrow steps to the kitchen, one of the strangest and grimmest old kitchens you

ever saw. Across a mighty hatch, thronged with dishes, you looked into it and beheld

there the white-jacketed man-cook, served by his two robust and red-armed kitchen

maids. For you they were preparing chops, pork chops in winter, lamb chops in spring,

mutton chops always, and steaks and sausages, and kidneys and potatoes, and poached

eggs and Welsh rabbits, and stewed cheese, the special glory of the house. That was the

'menu' and men were the only guests. But of late years, as innovations often precede a

catastrophe, two new things were introduced, vegetables and women. Both were

respectable and both were good, but it was felt, especially by the virtuous Smurthwaite,

that they were 'de trop' in a place so masculine and so carnivorous."

O plump head-waiter at The Cock,To which I most resort,How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock.Go fetch a pint of port:But let it not be such as thatYou set before chance-comers,But such whose father-grape grew fatOn Lusitanian summers.

No vain libation to the Muse,But may she still be kind,

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But for some true result of goodAll parties work together.

Let there be thistles, there are grapes;If old things, there are new;

Ten thousand broken lights and shapes,Yet glimpses of the true.Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme,We lack not rhymes and reasons,As on this whirligig of Time [4]We circle with the seasons.

This earth is rich in man and maid;With fair horizons bound:This whole wide earth of light and shadeComes out, a perfect round.

High over roaring Temple-bar,And, set in Heaven's third story,I look at all things as they are,But thro' a kind of glory.

Head-waiter, honour'd by the guestHalf-mused, or reeling-ripe,The pint, you brought me, was the bestThat ever came from pipe.But tho' [3] the port surpasses praise,My nerves have dealt with stiffer.Is there some magic in the place?Or do my peptics differ?

For since I came to live and learn, No pint of white or redHad ever half the power to turnThis wheel within my head,

Which bears a season'd brain about,Unsubject to confusion,

Tho' [3] soak'd and saturate, out and out,Thro' every convolution.

For I am of a numerous house,With many kinsmen gay,Where long and largely we carouseAs who shall say me nay:Each month, a birthday coming on,We drink defying trouble,Or sometimes two would meet in one,And then we drank it double;

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Whether the vintage, yet unkept,Had relish, fiery-new,Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept,As old as Waterloo;Or stow'd (when classic Canning died)

In musty bins and chambers,Had cast upon its crusty sideThe gloom of ten Decembers.

The Muse, the jolly Muse, it is!She answer'd to my call,She changes with that mood or this,Is all-in-all to all:She lit the spark within my throat,To make my blood run quicker,Used all her fiery will, and smote

Her life into the liquor.

And hence this halo lives aboutThe waiter's hands, that reachTo each his perfect pint of stout,His proper chop to each.He looks not like the common breedThat with the napkin dally;I think he came like Ganymede,From some delightful valley.

The Cock was of a larger eggThan modern poultry drop,Stept forward on a firmer leg,And cramm'd a plumper crop;Upon an ampler dunghill trod,Crow'd lustier late and early,Sipt wine from silver, praising God,And raked in golden barley.

A private life was all his joy,

Till in a court he sawA something-pottle-bodied boy,That knuckled at the taw:He stoop'd and clutch'd him, fair and good,Flew over roof and casement:His brothers of the weather stoodStock-still for sheer amazement.

But he, by farmstead, thorpe and spire,And follow'd with acclaims,A sign to many a staring shire,

Came crowing over Thames.Right down by smoky Paul's they bore,

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Till, where the street grows straiter, [5]One fix'd for ever at the door,And one became head-waiter.

But whither would my fancy go?

How out of place she makesThe violet of a legend blowAmong the chops and steaks!'Tis but a steward of the can,One shade more plump than common;As just and mere a serving-manAs any born of woman.

I ranged too high: what draws me downInto the common day?Is it the weight of that half-crown,

Which I shall have to pay?

For, something duller than at first, Nor wholly comfortable,I sit (my empty glass reversed),And thrumming on the table:

Half-fearful that, with self at strifeI take myself to task;Lest of the fullness of my lifeI leave an empty flask:For I had hope, by something rare,To prove myself a poet;But, while I plan and plan, my hair Is gray before I know it.

So fares it since the years began,Till they be gather'd up;The truth, that flies the flowing can,Will haunt the vacant cup:And others' follies teach us not,

Nor much their wisdom teaches;And most, of sterling worth, is whatOur own experience preaches.

Ah, let the rusty theme alone!We know not what we know.But for my pleasant hour, 'tis gone,'Tis gone, and let it go.'Tis gone: a thousand such have sliptAway from my embraces,And fall'n into the dusty crypt

Of darken'd forms and faces.

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Go, therefore, thou! thy betters wentLong since, and came no more;With peals of genial clamour sentFrom many a tavern-door,With twisted quirks and happy hits,

From misty men of letters;The tavern-hours of mighty wits--Thine elders and thy betters.

Hours, when the Poet's words and looksHad yet their native glow:

Not yet the fear of little booksHad made him talk for show:But, all his vast heart sherris-warm'd,He flash'd his random speeches;Ere days, that deal in ana, swarm'd

His literary leeches.

So mix for ever with the past,Like all good things on earth!For should I prize thee, couldst thou last,At half thy real worth?I hold it good, good things should pass:With time I will not quarrel:It is but yonder empty glassThat makes me maudlin-moral.

Head-waiter of the chop-house here,To which I most resort,I too must part: I hold thee dear For this good pint of port.For this, thou shalt from all things suck Marrow of mirth and laughter;And, wheresoe'er thou move, good luck Shall fling her old shoe after.

But thou wilt never move from hence,

The sphere thy fate allots:Thy latter days increased with penceGo down among the pots:Thou battenest by the greasy gleamIn haunts of hungry sinners,Old boxes, larded with the steamOf thirty thousand dinners.

_We_ fret, _we_ fume, would shift our skins,Would quarrel with our lot;

_Thy_ care is, under polish'd tins,

To serve the hot-and-hot;To come and go, and come again,

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Returning like the pewit,And watch'd by silent gentlemen,That trifle with the cruet.

Live long, ere from thy topmost head

The thick-set hazel dies;Long, ere the hateful crow shall treadThe corners of thine eyes:Live long, nor feel in head or chestOur changeful equinoxes,Till mellow Death, like some late guest,Shall call thee from the boxes.

But when he calls, and thou shalt ceaseTo pace the gritted floor,And, laying down an unctuous lease

Of life, shalt earn no more; No carved cross-bones, the types of Death,Shall show thee past to Heaven:But carved cross-pipes, and, underneath,A pint-pot neatly graven.

[Footnote 1: 1842 and all previous to 1853. To full and kindly.]

[Footnote 2: All previous to 1853:--

Like Hezekiah's, backward runsThe shadow of my days.]

[Footnote 3: All previous to 1853. Though.]

[Footnote 4: The expression is Shakespeare's, 'Twelfth Night', v., i.,

"and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges".]

[Footnote 5: 1842 to 1843. With motion less or greater.]

Lady Clare

It was the time when lilies blowAnd clouds are highest up in air;

Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doeTo give his cousin, Lady Clare.

I trow they did not part in scorn:

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Lovers long-betroth'd were they:They too will wed the morrow morn:

God's blessing on the day!

"He does not love me for my birth,

Nor for my lands so broad and fair;He loves me for my own true worth,And that is well," said Lady Clare.

In there came old Alice the nurse;Said: "Who was this that went from thee?"

"It was my cousin," said Lady Clare;"To-morrow he weds with me."

"O God be thank'd!" said Alice the nurse,"That all comes round so just and fair:

Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,And you are not the Lady Clare."

"Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse,"Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wild?"

"As God's above," said Alice the nurse,"I speak the truth: you are my child.

"The old Earl's daughter died at my breast;I speak the truth, as I live by bread!

I buried her like my own sweet child,And put my child in her stead."

"Falsely, falsely have ye done,O mother," she said, "if this be true,

To keep the best man under the sunSo many years from his due."

"Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,"But keep the secret for your life,

And all you have will be Lord Ronald's

When you are man and wife.""If I'm a beggar born," she said,"I will speak out, for I dare not lie.

Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,And fling the diamond necklace by."

"Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,"But keep the secret all ye can."

She said: "Not so: but I will knowIf there be any faith in man."

"Nay now, what faith?" said Alice the nurse,

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"The man will cleave unto his right,""And he shall have it," the lady replied,"Tho' I should die to-night."

"Yet give one kiss to your mother dear!

Alas! my child, I sinn'd for thee.""O mother, mother, mother," she said,"So strange it seems to me.

"Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear,My mother dear, if this be so,

And lay your hand upon my head,And bless me, mother, ere I go."

She clad herself in a russet gown,She was no longer Lady Clare:

She went by dale, and she went by down,With a single rose in her hair.

The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had broughtLeapt up from where she lay,

Dropt her head in the maiden's hand,And follow'd her all the way.

Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:"O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!

Why come you drest like a village maid,That are the flower of the earth?"

"If I come drest like a village maid,I am but as my fortunes are:

I am a beggar born," she said,"And not the Lady Clare."

"Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,"For I am yours in word and in deed.

Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,

"Your riddle is hard to read."O and proudly stood she up!

Her heart within her did not fail:She look'd into Lord Ronald's eyes,

And told him all her nurse's tale.

He laugh'd a laugh of merry scorn:He turn'd and kiss'd her where she stood:

"If you are not the heiress born?And I," said he, "the next in blood--

"If you are not the heiress born,

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And I," said he, "the lawful heir,We two will wed to-morrow morn,

And you shall still be Lady Clare."

The Captain (Tennyson)

A Legend of the Navy

He that only rules by terror Doeth grievous wrong.

Deep as hell I count his error.

Let him hear my song.Brave the Captain was; the seamen

Made a gallant crew,Gallant sons of English freemen,

Sailors bold and true.But they hated his oppression;

Stern he was and rash,So for every light transgression

Doom’d them to the lash.Day by day more hard and cruel

Seem’d the Captain’s mood.Secret wrath like smother’d fuel

Burnt in each man’s blood.Yet he hoped to purchase glory,

Hoped to make the nameOf his vessel great in story,

Wheresoe’er he came.So they past by capes and islands,

Many a harbour-mouth,Sailing under palmy highlands

Far within the South.

On a day when they were goingO’er the lone expanse,In the north, her canvas flowing,

Rose a ship of France.Then the Captain’s colour heighten’d,

Joyful came his speech;But the cloudy gladness lighten’d

In the eyes of each.‘Chase,’ he said; the ship flew forward,

And the wind did blow;Stately, lightly went she northward,

Till she near’d the foe.Then they look’d at him they hated,

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Had what they desired;Mute with folded arms they waited –

Not a gun was fired.But they heard the foeman’s thunder

Roaring out their doom;

All the air was turn in sunder,Crashing went the boom.Spars were splinter’d, decks were shatter’d,

Bullets fell like rain;Over mast and deck were scatter’d

Blood and brains of men.Spars were splinter’d; decks were broken;

Every mother’s son – Down they dropt – nor word were spoken –

Each behind his gun.On the decks as they were lying,

Were their faces grim;In their blood, as they lay dying,

Did they smile on him.Those in whom he had reliance

For his noble nameWith one smile of still defiance

Sold him into shame.Shame and wrath his heart confounded,

Pale he turn’d and red,Till himself was deadly wounded

Falling on the dead.Dismal error! fearful slaughter!

Years have wander’d by;Side by side beneath the water

Crew and Captain lie;There the sunlit ocean tosses

O’er them the mouldering,And the lonely seabird crosses

With one waft of the wing.

The Lord of Burleigh

In her ear he whispers gaily,"If my heart by signs can tell,

Maiden, I have watched thee daily,And I think thou lov'st me well."

She replies, in accents fainter,"There is none I love like thee."

He is but a landscape-painter,

And a village maiden she.

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He to lips, that fondly falter,Presses his without reproof;

Leads her to the village altar,And they leave her father's roof.

"I can make no marriage present;Little can I give my wife.Love will make our cottage pleasant,

And I love thee more than life."

They by parks and lodges goingSee the lordly castles stand;

Summer woods, about them blowing,Made a murmur in the land.

From deep thought himself he rouses,

Says to her that loves him well,"Let us see these handsome houses

Where the wealthy nobles dwell."

So she goes by him attended,Hears him lovingly converse,

Sees whatever fair and splendidLay betwixt his home and hers.

Parks with oak and chestnut shady,Parks and order'd gardens great,

Ancient homes of lord and lady,Built for pleasure and for state.

All he shows her makes him dearer;Evermore she seems to gaze

On that cottage growing nearer,Where they twain will spend their days.

O but she will love him truly!He shall have a cheerful home;

She will order all things dulyWhen beneath his roof they come.

Thus her heart rejoices greatlyTill a gateway she discerns

With armorial bearings stately,And beneath the gate she turns;

Sees a mansion more majesticThan all those she saw before;

Many a gallant gay domesticBows before him at the door.

And they speak in gentle murmur

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When they answer to his call,While he treads with footstep firmer,

Leading on from hall to hall.

And while now she wanders blindly,

Nor the meaning can divine,Proudly turns he round and kindly,"All of this is mine and thine."

Here he lives in state and bounty,Lord of Burleigh, fair and free.

Not a lord in all the countyIs so great a lord as he.

All at once the colour flushesHer sweet face from brow to chin;

As it were with same she blushes,

And her spirit changed within.

Then her countenance all over Pale again as death did prove:

But he clasp'd her like a lover,And he cheer'd her soul with love.

So she strove against her weakness,Tho' at times her spirits sank;

Shaped her heart with woman's meeknessTo all duties of her rank;

And a gentle consort made she,And her gentle mind was such

That she grew a noble lady,And the people loved her much.

But a trouble weigh'd upon her And perplex'd her, night and morn,

With the burden of an honour Unto which she was not born.

Faint she grew and ever fainter.

As she murmur'd, "Oh, that heWere once more that landscape-painter Which did win my heart from me!"

So she droop'd and droop'd before him,Fading slowly from his side;

Three fair children first she bore him,Then before her time she died.

Weeping, weeping late and early,Walking up and pacing down,

Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh,Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.

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And he came to look upon her,And he look'd at her and said,

"Bring the dress and put it on her That she wore when she was wed."

Then her people, softly treading,Bore to earth her body, drest

In the dress that she was wed in,That her spirit might have rest.

The Voyage

I.We left behind the painted buoyThat tosses at the harbor-mouth;And madly danced our hearts with joy,As fast we fleeted to the South:How fresh was every sight and soundOn open main or winding shore!We knew the merry world was round,And we might sail for evermore.

II.Warm broke the breeze against the brow,Dry sang the tackle, sang the sail:The Lady's-head upon the prowCaught the shrill salt, and sheer'd the gale.The broad seas swell'd to meet the keel,And swept behind: so quick the run,We felt the good ship shake and reel,We seem'd to sail into the Sun!

III.How oft we saw the Sun retire,

And burn the threshold of the night,Fall from his Ocean-lane of fire,And sleep beneath his pillar'd light!How oft the purple-skirted robeOf twilight slowly downward drawn,As thro' the slumber of the globeAgain we dash'd into the dawn!

IV.New stars all night above the brimOf waters lighten'd into view;They climb'd as quickly, for the rim

Changed every moment as we flew.Far ran the naked moon across

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The houseless ocean's heaving field,Or flying shone, the silver bossOf her own halo's dusky shield;

V.The peaky islet shifted shapes,

High towns on hills were dimly seen,We past long lines of Northern capesAnd dewy Northern meadows green.We came to warmer waves, and deepAcross the boundless east we drove,Where those long swells of breaker sweepThe nutmeg rocks and isles clove.

VI.By peaks that flamed, or, all in shade,Gloom'd the low coast and quivering brineWith ashy rains, that spreading made

Fantastic plume or sable pine;By sands and steaming flats, and floodsOf mighty mouth, we scudded fast,And hills and scarlet-mingled woodsGlow'd for a moment as we past.

VII.O hundred shores of happy climes,How swiftly stream'd ye by the bark!At times the whole sea burn'd, at timesWith wakes of fire we tore the dark;At times a carven craft would shoot

From havens hid in fairy bowers,With naked limbs and flowers and fruit,But we nor paused for fruit nor flowers.

VIII.For one fair Vision ever fledDown the waste waters day and night,And still we follow'd where she led,In hope to gain upon her flight.Her face was evermore unseen,And fixt upon the far sea-line;But each man murmur'd `O my Queen,

I follow till I make thee mine.'

IX.And now we lost her, now she gleam'dLike Fancy made of golden air,Now nearer to the prow she seem'dLike Virtue firm, like Knowledge fair,Now high on waves that idly burstLike Heavenly Hope she crown'd the seaAnd now, the bloodless point reversed,She bore the blade of Liberty.

X.And only one among us--him

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We please not--he was seldom pleased:He saw not far: his eyes were dim:But ours he swore were all diseased.`A ship of fools' he shriek'd in spite,`A ship of fools' he sneer'd and wept.And overboard one stormy night

He cast his body, and on we swept.

XI.And never sail of ours was furl'd,Nor anchor dropt at eve or morn;We loved the glories of the world,But laws of nature were our scorn;For blasts would rise and rave and cease,But whence were those that drove the sailAcross the whirlwind's heart of peace,And to and thro' the counter-gale?

XII.Again to colder climes we came,For still we follow'd where she led:Now mate is blind and captain lame,And half the crew are sick or dead.But blind or lame or sick or soundWe follow that which flies before:We know the merry world is round,And we may sail for evermore.

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

Like souls that balance joy and pain,With tears and smiles from heaven againThe maiden Spring upon the plainCame in a sunlit fall of rain.

In crystal vapor everywhere

Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,And far, in forest-deeps unseen,The topmost elm-tree gather'd green

From draughts of balmy air.

Sometimes the linnet piped his song;Sometimes the throstle whistled strong;Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong;

By grassy capes with fuller soundIn curves the yellowing river ran,

And drooping chestnut-buds beganTo spread into the perfect fan,

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Above the teeming ground.

Then, in the boyhood of the year,Sir Launcelot and Queen GuinevereRode thro' the coverts of the deer,

With blissful treble ringing clear.She seem'd a part of joyous Spring;A gown of grass-green silk she wore,Buckled with golden clasps before;A light-green tuft of plumes she bore

Closed in a golden ring.

Now on some twisted ivy-net, Now by some tinkling rivulet,In mosses mixt with violetHer cream-white mule his pastern set;

And fleeter now she skimm'd the plainsThan she whose elfin prancer springsBy night to eery warblings,When all the glimmering moorland rings

With jingling bridle-reins.

As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,The happy winds upon her play'd,Blowing the ringlet from the braid.She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd

The rein with dainty finger-tips,A man had given all other bliss,And all his worldly worth for this,To waste his whole heart in one kiss

Upon her perfect lips.

A Farewell (Tennyson)

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,Thy tribute wave deliver: No more by thee my steps shall be,For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,A rivulet then a river:

Nowhere by thee my steps shall beFor ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree

And here thine aspen shiver;And here by thee will hum the bee,

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For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,A thousand moons will quiver;But not by thee my steps shall be,

For ever and for ever.

The Beggar Maid

Her arms across her breast she laid;She was more fair than words can say;

Barefooted came the beggar maidBefore the king Cophetua.

In robe and crown the king stept down,To meet and greet her on her way;

"It is no wonder," said the lords,"She is more beautiful than day."

And shines the moon in clouded skies,She in poor attire was seen:

One praised her ankles, one her eyes,One her dark hair and lovesome mien.

So sweet a face, such angel grace,In all that land had never been:

Cophetua sware a royal oath:"That beggar maid shall be my queen!"

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;Close to the sun in lonely lands,Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;He watches from his mountain walls,And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Move eastward, happy earth, and leave

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Move eastward, happy earth, and leaveYour orange sunset waning slow;

From fringes of the faded eve,O, happy planet, eastward go;

Till over thy dark shoulder glow

Thy silver sister-world, and riseTo glass herself in dewy eyesThat watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly born,Dip forward under starry light,

And move me to my marriage-morn,And round again to happy night.

Come not, when I am dead

A 1905 recording of the poem set to music

Come not, when I am dead,To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,

To trample round my fallen head,And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;

But thou, go by.

Child, if it were thine error or thy crimeI care no longer, being all unblest:

Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time,And I desire to rest.

Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:Go by, go by.

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http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/File:1905-Tennyson_sheet_music.jpg

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/File:1905-Tennyson_sheet_music.jpg



The Vision of Sin

First published in 1842. No alteration made in it after 1851, except in the insertion of acouplet afterwards omitted.

This remarkable poem may be regarded as a sort of companion poem to 'The Palace of Art'; the one traces the effect of callous indulgence in mere intellectual and aesthetic

pleasures, the other of profligate indulgence in the grosser forms of sensual enjoyment.At first all is ecstasy and intoxication, then comes satiety, and all that satiety brings inits train, cynicism, pessimism, the drying up of the very springs of life. "The bodychilled, jaded and ruined, the cup of pleasure drained to the dregs, the senses exhaustedof their power to enjoy, the spirit of its wish to aspire, nothing left but loathing, craving

and rottenness." See Spedding in 'Edinburgh Review' for April, 1843. The poemconcludes by leaving as an answer to the awful question, "can there be final salvationfor the poor wretch?" a reply undecipherable by man, and dawn breaking in angrysplendour. The best commentary on the poem would be Byron's lyric: "There's not a joythe world can give like that it takes away," and 'Don Juan'; biography and daily life areindeed full of comments on the truth of this fine allegory.

1

I had a vision when the night was late:A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown, [1]But that his heavy rider kept him down.And from the palace came a child of sin,And took him by the curls, and led him in,Where sat a company with heated eyes,Expecting when a fountain should arise:A sleepy light upon their brows and lips--As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse,Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes--

Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes,By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes.

2

Then methought I heard a mellow sound,Gathering up from all the lower ground; [2]

Narrowing in to where they sat assembledLow voluptuous music winding trembled,Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sigh'd,Panted hand in hand with faces pale,

Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;Till the fountain spouted, showering wide

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Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail;Then the music touch'd the gates and died;Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,

As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated;Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,Caught the sparkles, and in circles,Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,Flung the torrent rainbow round:Then they started from their places,Moved with violence, changed in hue,Caught each other with wild grimaces,Half-invisible to the view,Wheeling with precipitate paces

To the melody, till they flew,Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,Twisted hard in fierce embraces,Like to Furies, like to Graces,Dash'd together in blinding dew:Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony,The nerve-dissolving melodyFlutter'd headlong from the sky.

3

And then I look'd up toward a mountain-tract,That girt the region with high cliff and lawn:I saw that every morning, far withdrawnBeyond the darkness and the cataract,God made himself an awful rose of dawn, [3]Unheeded: and detaching, fold by fold,From those still heights, and, slowly drawing near,A vapour heavy, hueless, formless, cold,Came floating on for many a month and year,Unheeded: and I thought I would have spoken,

And warn'd that madman ere it grew too late:But, as in dreams, I could not. Mine was broken,When that cold vapour touch'd the palace-gate,And link'd again. I saw within my headA gray and gap-tooth'd man as lean as death,Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath,And lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said:

4

"Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!

Here is custom come your way;Take my brute, and lead him in,

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Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay.

"Bitter barmaid, waning fast!See that sheets are on my bed;What! the flower of life is past:

It is long before you wed.

"Slip-shod waiter, lank and sour,At the Dragon on the heath!Let us have a quiet hour,Let us hob-and-nob with Death.

"I am old, but let me drink;Bring me spices, bring me wine;I remember, when I think,That my youth was half divine.

"Wine is good for shrivell'd lips,When a blanket wraps the day,When the rotten woodland drips,And the leaf is stamp'd in clay.

"Sit thee down, and have no shame,Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee:What care I for any name?What for order or degree?

"Let me screw thee up a peg:Let me loose thy tongue with wine:Callest thou that thing a leg?Which is thinnest? thine or mine?

"Thou shalt not be saved by works:Thou hast been a sinner too:Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks,Empty scarecrows, I and you!

"Fill the cup, and fill the can:Have a rouse before the morn:Every moment dies a man,Every moment one is born. [4]

"We are men of ruin'd blood;Therefore comes it we are wise.Fish are we that love the mud.Rising to no fancy-flies.

"Name and fame! to fly sublime

Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools,Is to be the ball of Time,

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Bandied by the hands of fools.

"Friendship!--to be two in one--Let the canting liar pack!Well I know, when I am gone,

How she mouths behind my back.

"Virtue!--to be good and just--Every heart, when sifted well,Is a clot of warmer dust,Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.

"O! we two as well can look Whited thought and cleanly lifeAs the priest, above his book Leering at his neighbour's wife.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can:Have a rouse before the morn:Every moment dies a man,Every moment one is born. [4]

"Drink, and let the parties rave:They are fill'd with idle spleen;Rising, falling, like a wave,For they know not what they mean.

"He that roars for libertyFaster binds a tyrant's [5] power;And the tyrant's cruel gleeForces on the freer hour.

"Fill the can, and fill the cup:All the windy ways of menAre but dust that rises up,And is lightly laid again.

"Greet her with applausive breath,Freedom, gaily doth she tread;In her right a civic wreath,In her left a human head.

"No, I love not what is new;She is of an ancient house:And I think we know the hueOf that cap upon her brows.

"Let her go! her thirst she slakes

Where the bloody conduit runs:Then her sweetest meal she makes

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On the first-born of her sons.

"Drink to lofty hopes that cool--Visions of a perfect State:Drink we, last, the public fool,

Frantic love and frantic hate.

"Chant me now some wicked stave,Till thy drooping courage rise,And the glow-worm of the graveGlimmer in thy rheumy eyes.

"Fear not thou to loose thy tongue;Set thy hoary fancies free;What is loathsome to the youngSavours well to thee and me.

"Change, reverting to the years,When thy nerves could understandWhat there is in loving tears,And the warmth of hand in hand.

"Tell me tales of thy first love--April hopes, the fools of chance;Till the graves begin to move,And the dead begin to dance.

"Fill the can, and fill the cup:All the windy ways of menAre but dust that rises up,And is lightly laid again.

"Trooping from their mouldy densThe chap-fallen circle spreads:Welcome, fellow-citizens,Hollow hearts and empty heads!

"You are bones, and what of that?Every face, however full,Padded round with flesh and fat,Is but modell'd on a skull.

"Death is king, and Vivat Rex!Tread a measure on the stones,Madam--if I know your sex,From the fashion of your bones.

"No, I cannot praise the fire

In your eye--nor yet your lip:All the more do I admire

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Joints of cunning workmanship.

"Lo! God's likeness--the ground-plan-- Neither modell'd, glazed, or framed:Buss me thou rough sketch of man,

Far too naked to be shamed!

"Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,While we keep a little breath!Drink to heavy Ignorance!Hob-and-nob with brother Death!

"Thou art mazed, the night is long,And the longer night is near:What! I am not all as wrongAs a bitter jest is dear.

"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,When the locks are crisp and curl'd;Unto me my maudlin gallAnd my mockeries of the world.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can!Mingle madness, mingle scorn!Dregs of life, and lees of man:Yet we will not die forlorn."

5BBR[The voice grew faint: there came a further change:]Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range:Below were men and horses pierced with worms,And slowly quickening into lower forms;By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss,Then some one spake [6]: "Behold! it was a crimeOf sense avenged by sense that wore with time".[7] Another said: "The crime of sense became

The crime of malice, and is equal blame".And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power;A little grain of conscience made him sour".At last I heard a voice upon the slopeCry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"To which an answer peal'd from that high land.But in a tongue no man could understand;And on the glimmering limit far withdrawnGod made Himself an awful rose of dawn. [8]

[Footnote 1: A reference to the famous passage in the 'Phoedrus' where] Plato compares

the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds.

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Footnote 2: Imitated apparently from the dance in Shelley's 'Triumph of Life':--

The wild dance maddens in the van; and those...

Mix with each other in tempestuous measureTo savage music, wilder as it grows.

They, tortur'd by their agonising pleasure,Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun...Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air.As their feet twinkle, etc.

[Footnote 3: See footnote to last line.]

[Footnote 4: All up to and including 1850 read:--]

Every _minute_ dies a man,Every _minute_ one is born.

Mr. Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--

"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend tokeep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetualequipoise, whereas it is a**[Footnote: well-known fact that the saidsum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take theliberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent

poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be correctedas follows:--

Every moment dies a man,And one and a sixteenth is born.

I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre."

[Footnote 5: 1842 and 1843. The tyrant's.]

[Footnote 6: 1842. Said.]

[Footnote 7: In the Selection published in 1865 Tennyson here inserted a] couplet whichhe afterwards omitted:--

Another answer'd: "But a crime of sense!""Give him new nerves with old experience."

[Footnote 8: In Professor Tyndall's reminiscences of Tennyson, inserted] in Tennyson's

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'Life', he says he once asked him for some explanation of this line, and the poet's replywas:

"The power of explaining such concentrated expressions of theimagination was very different from that of writing them".

And on another occasion he said very happily:

"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader must find his own interpretation, according to his ability, andaccording to his sympathy with the poet".

Poetry in its essential forms always suggests infinitely more than it expresses, and atonce inspires and kindles the intelligence which is to comprehend it; if that intelligence,which is perhaps only another name for sympathy, does not exist, then, in Byron'shappy sarcasm:--

"The gentle readers wax unkind,And, not so studious for the poet's ease,Insist on knowing what he 'means', a hardAnd hapless situation for a bard".

Possibly Tennyson may have had in his mind Keats's line:--

"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven".

To E. L., on his Travels in Greece

Illyrian woodlands, echoing fallsOf water, sheets of summer glass,The long divine Peneian pass,The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,With such a pencil, such a pen,You shadow forth to distant men,I read and felt that I was there:

And trust me while I turn'd the page,And track'd you still on classic ground,I grew in gladness till I foundMy spirits in the golden age.

For me the torrent ever pour'dAnd glisten'd -- here and there alone

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The broad-limb'd gods at random thrownBy fountain urns; -- and Naiads oar'd

A glimmering shoulder under gloomOf cavern pillars; on the swell

The silver lily heaved and fell;And many a slope was rich in bloom

From him that on the mountain leaBy dancing rivulets fed his flocks,To him who sat upon the rocks,And fluted to the morning sea.

From Letters of Edward Lear , ed. Lady Strachey,1907, p. v]

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me. O well for the fisherman’s boy,That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go onTo their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.

The Poet's Song

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The rain had fallen; the Poet arose;He passed by the town, and out of the street.

A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,And waves of shadow went over the wheat,

And he set him down in a lonely place,

And chanted a melody loud and sweet,That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee,The snake slipt under a spray,

The hawk stood with the down on his beak And stared, with his foot on the prey,

And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs,But never a one so gay,

For he sings of what the world will be

When the years have died away."

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Alfred Tennyson (3)

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